Tales of the Way-Station
by Shadsie
Summary: The Smash World was a way-station for warrior-souls not yet ready for the afterlife. Link had come here many times as a respite between his limitless lifetimes. Strangely, battle became therapy. Hearts could mended at sword-point. After all, no one died here. Link encounters a new arrival, a pretty blue-haired woman. Tales of her adjustment and tales of other souls await.
1. Trying to Seize Peace with a Sword

_**Dislcaimer and Notes:**_ _Super Smash Bros. and all involved games and characters belong to Nintendo. No profit is sought, blah, blah, blah._

 _This is a storyline that I've roleplayed out on AIM/Trillian with my buddy, Blender, to try to work out my base-ideas. The storylines we created became interesting. It borrows from an idea I've used before: "Heaven for Heroes" was my very first Smash Bros. fan fiction and dealt with the "Smash as Valhalla" concept in a far different way. This is a story without any planned ending, just a "meandering tale" playing with non-canon idea about a setting, for as many arcss as we have thought and can think of. As always, my focus will be on characters that I currently know and am interested in. (Mainly The Legend of Zelda, Kid Icarus and Fire Emblem: Awakening). For fair warning for shippers and anti-shippers: This story set will contain Link x Lucina, which my friend and I have dubbed "Lunk."_

Spoilers for various games apply, especially those listed.

* * *

 **TALES OF THE WAY-STATION**

* * *

 **1: Trying to Seize Peace with a Sword**

The wind combed the grass on the hills as a lone man sat with his back against it, his sword and his shield resting beside him. The land was big and the Mansion was confining. As huge as the Hands' Smash Bros. complex was, Link preferred the wild places to spend his off-time in. The environs of this place were plenty vast enough to accommodate his needs as well as the needs of the wild creatures that also lived here.

Not that anyone truly "lived" in this world.

After many miles beyond the forest, the city, the mountains and the desert the land fell off into jagged cliffs and an endless void like an ocean speckled with distant galaxies. Link rarely went that far, but sometimes he rode to the edge on his faithful mare. He wondered, morbidly, what would happen should he or another person was to jump off or fall off the edge of the world, but it was not possible. There was an invisible barrier that kept anyone from being capable of trying such a stunt. Beyond that, the dead could not be killed, anyway.

This place, sometimes called the "Smash World" after the "smashing feasts and fights" system of entertainment that its guardians had created was a place where the dead lived. The souls of fallen warriors from many different countries, worlds and universes were gathered here at the discretion of a deity everyone called Master Hand for the fact that he appeared to them as a giant, gloved hand. He had a brother-deity, the Crazy Hand, but the left hand was not as much for management as the right and was rarely seen. The Hands were representative of Order and Chaos respectively and it was speculated that they had a greater over-deity behind them. According to the Master Hand, he had dealings with the various gods that presided over the many worlds and was able to choose people to bring to the Smash World according to his whim.

The place was generally understood not be an ultimate afterlife, but a way-station for weary souls that needed either to work through personal issues or, in some cases, like Link's, it was a place for souls to hang out in between incarnations.

Link had been here many times. Sure, he had experienced the Golden Land of his Three Goddesses, but when he was taken away to here after one of his many lives had ended, it was the Smash World that he'd chosen as his place of waiting. The Hero of Hyrule was basically a spirit under contract to return to his world and country when they needed him. It was a pact he was caught in with his nation's divine-descendant ruler, Zelda, and with the great villain that was here, too, the King of Evil, Ganondorf.

Everyone here was here for different reasons, so they had learned from the Hands and from each other. Link merely required a place of rest to refresh his soul before its journey into another life. While he did not remember his past lives during any given lifetime, they all came back to him here, as well as memories of past stays.

His latest life had been spent fighting clouds of darkness as a shape shifter. A surprisingly useful curse had turned him into a wolf for part of his journey. His hero's journey had been grueling but relatively short to the life he'd had after it, which had been, for a legend chosen by the gods, surprisingly mundane. After defeating the shadows and Ganondorf, and losing a dear friend to her own world, Link had done some random "hero's work" by clearing out monsters where they appeared near towns. He'd served as a guide for people settling unexplored lands. Eventually, he'd settled into life as a shepherd, or a goatherd to be more precise, just as he was before he received the Hero's call. His last life had been a far easier life than some he'd had.

Link had been given the privilege of dying as an old man this last go-round. He'd died much younger in many other lives. He'd been hanging around the Smash World for about thirty years this time, not that time mattered here. Everyone who came here was given the appearance and health of their "prime" form. He'd come here as young as he'd been in his Sacred Hero-days rather than the wrinkled, bristly old man that he'd been on his deathbed, racked with pneumonia.

The people here were given physical forms and could experience everything that came with them. Pleasure, injury and pain, hunger, thirst, touch… It made them more comfortable than being some kind of wispy, disembodied things or mere clouds of consciousness. The only two things that could not happen here in regard to physicality were pregnancy and death, though the people here could be said to "die" eventually in regards to their leaving. When someone "left" this land, it came as first a feeling, then a fading and merely meant that they were returning to life in their home universe (as Link so often had) or that they were ascending to the true afterworld that was meant for them.

As it was, while Link was a simple man-between-lifetimes, here to hone his skills, as it were. Other souls were here for far different reasons. He and Zelda were bound to Ganondorf – who was here for "containment" purposes. Other villains and even heroic people were here for redemption purposes.

Strangely enough, a lot of the "working oneself out" could come through violence. The Hands had created stages for combat and even various contests and tournaments for fighting. Link did wonder how much of a "redemptive exercise" these things were and how much was just entertainment for the Hands and for the people of the adjacent city who also lived in this place. The "Smashers" or "Fighters" as they were called never knew if the spectators to their battles were also lost souls or if they were wholly mortal and just happened to live here or what. None of the residents of the Mansion-proper had a chance to interact with them directly.

Sometimes, the warriors here would voluntarily take battles – setting up matches for themselves, their friends and their rivals, independent of tournament-play. It was all an interesting kind of warfare – one that was ultimately pacifistic. Since no one who was dead could die again, the closest thing that was in place to mimic death was for a loser to become a trophy. When one had taken too much damage or had taken a one-shot fatal blow, they vanished and rematerialized somewhere on the grounds as a statue and stayed that way for a while. It was a recovery-measure. Everyone came out of trophy-form fully-healed. How long one spent as a statue was dependant upon what kind of damage one took. A simple stab to the heart would put someone out for about a day. Being torn to pieces by other fighters or stage-hazards could put one out for a week.

There was a trick to falling asleep as soon as one became "trophified" but not everyone got the hang of it at first. Link was one of the few fighters who sometimes willingly stayed awake in trophy-form on occasion. This was mainly because he didn't want to miss watching matches that his friends were in. Whenever Mario, for instance, was slated for an interesting match and he'd been made a trophy, Link would have Ike or Donkey Kong or somebody else strong lug him to the spectator box so he could watch even while "ill." Then again, Link had been the avatar of courage in his lifetimes and was brave (or perhaps foolish) enough to torture himself with being conscious in such a state.

It was much harder for others. He recalled watching each of the Robins nearly go mad after they'd awakened from their first respective trophy-states. Each of them had trauma connected with being taken over by something that was not them, of having their will overwritten by "Fate." The trophifying wasn't exactly like that which they'd suffered during their natural lives, but being trapped like that had been triggering to them both. As it was, they'd perfected the art of going immediately unconscious if they were ever felled. Zelda was the same way, which was understandable after her latest life. Link remembered when she had been made a magical puppet by Ganondorf. Even in this afterlife state, his body bore a scar from when her body had battled him. Perhaps he had needed the mark as a part of his memory – a stark reminder that he had lived.

Many interesting beings came here to rest and to fight. Link was one of the eldest souls here, having shuffled in and out of this place on a "revolving door" plan. This meant that he had been privileged to see many souls come and go. The Robin-twins were among the newest arrivals and tended to go by Robin and Rob respectively, or sometimes Mrs. Shepherd and Mr. Grimm – surnames they had chosen for themselves. They were a couple of people whom Link found particularly intriguing because they were, technically the same person. They were different versions of a life born into different universes. This, alone, meant that they were separate beings, but they really made one wonder about "what might have been." They made Link wonder if there was a "Linka" or "Linkelle" out there somewhere in the multiverse. As it was, there was "Toony" – a Hylian hero of a separate linage that carried Link's curse and blessing of being chosen by their gods to fight evil in a splinter-timeline he'd inadvertently created in one of his lives.

Link had found Robin Shepherd, the lady, out in a field by the Mansion a few years ago. Many of the souls arrived unconscious and she had been no exception. He was walking on his way to the river to fish when he'd seen a cloaked figure on the ground. She gently awakened. He helped her up and she immediately started crying bitterly about how he wasn't someone named "Chrom." Apparently, she had expected to see this Chrom-person. She'd hit him in the chest weakly with a balled-up fist and he'd hugged her and calmed her down.

Link did his best to explain where she was and she had taken it surprisingly well. Not many fresh warriors readily believed that they had died. Many were angry or aggrieved by the concept. Robin was not. Being dead seemed to be a foregone conclusion for her, although she did seem to be surprised to be conscious. In her time here, Link had gotten to know her story and between her tale and what Master Hand had to say of her, he greatly respected the woman. In her words, she had "died slaying a dragon." The reason why she was upset upon awakening to his pointy-eared face rather than that of someone she knew from her world was that she had been ardently hoping to be given the gift of restoration and resurrection because of a "promise of invisible threads."

Instead, she was here – dead and perhaps waiting for those bonds to come together. She had left behind children in her world. Even a noble death wasn't beautiful for someone who had left behind people in need of care.

Robin's problems, however, seemed to pale in comparison to those of her fragment-universe "brother." Rob Grimm had arrived shortly after she had, waking up in the same field as Link had found Robin. Luigi and Pikachu had found him. While Robin had died slaying a dragon, Rob had been slain by a version of that very same dragon. Link had learned that the manner of slaying wasn't in any kind of normal manner. The poor man had been "eaten" body and soul. Rob was made up of the fragments of a soul gleaned out of a dark deity that had taken him over. Both he and Robin had explained that the ways that they existed had to do with differing decisions and circumstances. In any case, Link knew that Master Hand had decided that "a moment of despair should not define a person" in his case. Rob's presence here was a matter of redemption. He was a quiet fellow who spent most of his time with Robin, who had taken on the role of his therapist.

They were hilarious when they played games together. They'd been master tacticians during their lives and passed free time with games of strategy. Link often found them hunched over a Chess board in the garden, stuck in a stalemate to the point of being in a mutual trance-like state. They could be that way for hours. Link had no idea how to play Chess. He'd just go up to them then they were like that and re-arrange random pieces on the board to mess up their game just to break them out of it, usually when it was time for dinner. Link had once caught them so still, so stuck in concentration on a move that their namesakes were landing in their hair and using their heads as a launching platform for flight.

Link decided to wander back inside. He was in the mood for a coffee. He'd had enough of tootling on his ocarina into the uncaring wind for one day. He grabbed up his sword and shield – ah, yes, he was scheduled for a match with the gorilla and the auto-racer tomorrow, wasn't he? He wondered if Mario would have another cock-and-bull story for him about how he'd died… Link was certain that man had either multiple lives like he had or that he just liked making up stories. "Lava, Mario?" the Hylian would nod. "Oh, a fire-bar this time! Oh… snapping piranha plants?"

The Hylian found himself alone when he entered the back door and walked down the corridor that was the quickest way from the back-field to the cafeteria. His ears perked as he heard a bang and a clatter. He ran to where the sound had come from – one of the storage rooms for extra weapons. Yeah… what he'd heard was pretty much the distinct noise of a rack of inactive beam-swords falling to the tile.

He opened the door to see, collapsed upon the floor among fallen weaponry a very blue figure. He wondered "What is Marth doing in here?" at first, until he noticed the person's long, flowing hair. It was a woman – and from what he could see of her face turned to the side on the tile, she was beautiful.

Link stood still as her eyes fluttered open. She caught sight of him, swiftly sat up, reached for her belt and pulled a sword on him.

* * *

 _ **To be continued…**_

 _Yes, I blatantly ripped off a thing from the anime/novel series "The Twelve Kingdoms" – the Void Sea, just in case anyone caught that reference._


	2. A Despair-Filled Farewell

_I've decided upon my own ideas for pairings and detail-options regarding the Fire Emblem: Awakening characters – this means "Chrobin" (for the female version of Robin) exists here. It works best for the story I want to tell. The same with "Lunk." You've been signaled and/or warned._

 _I recently had some trouble on a general-Nintendo fanart club on the Great Intertubes that I was on in which a picture I'd done of a re-classed Lucina was rejected on the grounds of "canon violation" because the administrator of the club thought that the necessary female Robin / mother Robin for the re-class (off-screen) was a "genderbend" and "not canon." (You know, despite it being a front-and-center option IN THE DAMN GAME). I may have overlooked or forgotten something in the gallery rules that had spelled the stance on Robin and other avatar-characters out, but it still didn't smell right to me. I quit the club to pursue less strident clubs and am more determined to ever, as a female, to exist, playable as myself. I consider what is in the actual source material and optional therein to constitute legitimacy in regards to character-existence and shipping options. Of the Robins, both the male and the female of the species exist here, so I'm not in a frame of mind to hear about how either of them "shouldn't" from anyone. I might devour you with my sharp pointy teeth, and I normally do not eat my reviewers. (They give me gas). Thoughtful reviews and crit on anything else are, however, welcome._

* * *

 **TALES OF THE WAY-STATION**

* * *

 **2: A Despair-Filled Farewell**

The sword crashed down like lightning upon Link's hastily-grabbed shield. He'd left his sword strapped to his back and wondered, in a split-second, if that was wise. He braced himself under the shield, fending off the woman's sudden onslaught. Sure, he couldn't die here, but wounds weren't pleasant and he wanted to incur as few of them as possible – preferably none.

"Hah! Huh!" The madwoman was screaming out with the effort of her swings. She was actually quite good. Link had trouble keeping his body steady and countering her.

"Hey!" he yelped, "Calm down! I don't want to hurt you! Look, I'm not even holding my sword!"

The woman stepped back and cautiously lowered her weapon. Link slipped his shield to its rightful place upon his back. He held out his hands in a passive gesture. "See? I'm friendly," he offered.

She kept her eyes on him and looked both bewildered and angry. "Where am I?" she asked. "Why was I on the ground?"

"Floor," Link corrected. "I'm sorry you had to wake up in a storage room. You must like weapons, huh? Or barracks. New arrivals tend to wake up in places that are familiar to them in one way or another."

"New arrivals?"

"Yeah… it's going to be hard to explain, but please just try not to attack me."

Link noticed something very strange about the young woman's eyes. One of them just was not natural. He squint his hawklike-eyes and recognized that symbol. It was something sacred to some of his friends, like the mark of the Triforce was to him and the people of his world. He also noticed that he was looking intently into the eyes of a stranger – but, honestly, it was that brand that had caught his attention.

"I don't know why," the woman said slowly, "but felt unsafe, like I was under attack. There's no one here but you. I cannot say that I entirely trust you, but I'm sure I can take you if you try anything."

"Good to know," Link said with a sarcastic breath. He was used to people waking up insane by now, being one of the oldest of "old timers" in this place. They got better – Well, most of them got better. He noticed the woman subconsciously running her free hand along her side, as if she'd been injured. She looked to be in perfect health. Feeling a stirring from residual wounds was not uncommon. He'd coughed for a full week after his latest arrival and had kept subconsciously rubbing at wounds that no longer existed during previous arrivals.

Of course, the worst of it was breaking it to the newbies that they were, in fact, dead.

Link took a deep breath. "As for where you are," he began, rubbing the back of his neck, "The first thing you need to know is that you're among friends. We're a nice bunch, here, for the most part. Your life is most definitely not in danger. Second, I find that it's easier to explain our Mansion if you happen to know someone who's arrived earlier. You fit a description that's been conveyed to me by a couple of my friends."

The woman just gave him a skeptical look. She tightened her grip on her sword's hilt, but did not lift it.

"We can start with names, okay?" Link suggested. "Mine's Link. Don't let the pointy ears scare you – they're just a trait of my race. I know that they aren't terribly common. I'm a swordsman, though I was also a shepherd for a while and I know how to make a mean pumpkin soup."

"A shepherd?" The woman said, mulling over the familiarity of that title.

"Yeah. Sheep and goats. I'm as gentle as a lamb most of the time, but as fierce as a wolf if anyone I care about is threatened." He offered her a broad smile.

"That sounds about right," she said, sheathing her sword. "My name is Lucina. I was a Shepherd for a while, too, but I tended people, not sheep."

Link smiled again. "This is wonderful," he answered. "I think I know who you belong to, now, though I'll still need to narrow it down. I suspect you have at least one relation in this place."

"Is this a barracks of some sort?" Lucina asked. "A palace? This doesn't look like Ylisstol or any place in Regna Ferox or Plegia I've been to. Why would any of my family be he here? Was I injured? Did my father bring me here?"

"You're getting ahead of yourself," Link cautioned. "Okay. I need to ask you this question: Do you know someone who's a little on the short side, has white hair – but isn't old, is a huge strategy-nerd, knows magic and goes by the name of Robin?"

"Robin…" Lucina gasped, "Mother!"

"Well, that narrows it down!" Link said. "Whoa! Wait! I told you to hold off on trying to kill me!"

Lucina's sword had come out again and so had Link's shield. His arm trembled as the impact of the blade hit the Hylian steel, right in the Triforce-symbol.

"How do you know my mother?" Lucina demanded. "She's dead!"

"Yeah," Link said, "That is kind of the operative term here. We can explain! Robin is my friend, trust me! I can take you to her! Just trust me, will ya?"

There was something in this "Link's" manner that reminded Lucina of her friend, Brady, for a moment – or maybe it was that his pointed ears reminded him of her other friend, Nah. He was not counter-attacking nor was he making any kind of hostile move. He looked perfectly capable of combat, but was playing the diplomat. As she put away her sword, her imagination swam. Had Mother reappeared in the land of the living somewhere in some foreign place and had made new allies here in that time while waiting for someone to bring her back home? The thought filled her with a trill of hope. The last she had seen of her mother, she was dissipating into smoke – like a fallen Risen – having destroyed the source of her nightmares. She'd vanished into nothingness with a sad smile, registering her love for their odd little army and her far-flung hopes.

Lucina had been just close enough to see her face. It had been so serene – the face worn by someone who felt like their life was completed. Lucina herself had felt a complicated mixture of relief and heartbreak. It had been like a hot knife in her chest and something freezing her blood at once. She'd never forget the cry of her little brother, who'd been beside her. Morgan had been a ball of anguish for a long time after that day. It had not just been his mother that had chosen to die, but his entire past – as Mother had represented his only source of childhood memories. He'd begun getting better, living life again, studying insects that definitely were not roaches, playing pranks again on her and father and taking up reading Mother's book collection. Lucina made sure she saw the boy smile before she'd left Ylisstol on her journey.

Of course, when Lucina thought about it for too long, she realized that she was thinking about the Mother who was not truly Mother in-body, though she'd remained so in spirit. She was thinking of the one who'd successfully fought off the Fell Dragon's takeover of her form and mind, the person who had remained "Mother." It could not be Grima that Link was thinking about, could it? This world would be in ruins if so… No, it simply had to be Mother, alive and well again, just a little displaced! Oh, how happy everyone would be when she brought Ylisse's noble tactician home! Father! Father would be ecstatic!

"Take me to my mother at once!" Lucina demanded. She did so not in a rude manner. The edge of anger was gone. Her voice had a softness in it that Link picked up on. The lilt of it held the excitement of someone anticipating a long-awaited reunion after a despair-filled farewell.

"Just come with me" Link said. "She'll very happy to see you."

This was only partially true. People who were family or friends of new arrivals tended to express emotions that were bittersweet. They were, on one hand, overjoyed to see a loved-one again, but on the other hand, grieved over the reason for their being here. With each reunion came a parting in one world or another. Chances of reuniting with everyone that one had loved in life were slim, being that this was a place for special spirits. Link had never seen any of his friends who were immortal here, for instance – He'd never found Saria or the Skull Kid in this strange land. Likewise, random mortals he could recall tended to go on their merry way rather than take a stop at the way-station. He'd never found Malon, Pippit, Darunia or any of the Impas. He'd expected to run into one of Impa's incarnations taking a rest here sooner or later, since she was quite a fine warrior and because Zelda missed her.

To his bitterness, he'd not found Midna, here, either. He'd discovered a kind of trophy that mimicked her, but the form of it had been taken from his memories and was not a true incarnation. It was like having a toy in the shape of Midna that bore her laugh and some of her powers when he'd open a lucky random-package on a fight-stage. He found it mocking, but sometimes, even the soulless shade of a beloved friend was welcome company, like looking at a sepia-toned pictograph.

Link led Lucina through one of the main halls. Several other people were there. Mrs. Whiffit – a fitness instructor with porcelain-white skin - was busily trying to teach Yoga moves to Kirby. Efforts were predictably ineffectual. A dog and a duck were chasing each other while a little boy in a red cap was brandishing a tennis ball and trying to get the dog to pay attention to him. Samus Aran was out of her power armor and was having some kind of discussion with Zelda. Charizard was napping on the floor while Pokemon Trainer Red was seated on the couch using part of the beast's scaly back as a footstool. Was he eating cheez doodles? Link shook his head. This was no time to be distracted by snacks.

Lucina just stared as Link tried to usher her past. "Explaining all the strange people" was another hard part of the job for anyone who had found a new arrival and wanted to help them. Of course, "strange" was in the eye of the beholder. For instance, he'd found the Villagers' look to be highly irregular while his timeline-displaced counterpart found it quite normal and thought that his look was strange.

"Link?" Zelda called. "Who is this? Oh, we haven't had a new person in a long time! Have you sat down with her or taken her to Master Hand yet?"

Link shook his head in the negative. "She needs to see Robin right way – Lady Robin."

"I last saw her in the Roost," Samus informed.

"The Roost?" Lucina asked, not able to take her eyes off Kirby. "What is that creature? Is it some kind of living marshmallow?"

"It's Kirby. He is… an otherworldly being. He is rather sweet, though, but I wouldn't recommend trying to eat him. He'll eat you right back, ha, ha!"

Lucina felt Link tug at her arm, breaking her out of her thoughts that her once-friend Gaius might have to apologize to an entire race of pink things for his marshmallow-munching genocide.

The man in green took Lucina down a hallway to a door over which an ornate sign read – in a language she thought she shouldn't be able to understand, but did, anyway – "Robin's Roost." Link knocked three times.

A voice inside called "Speak, friend, and enter!"

"Oh, Robin," Link groused, "That is an old, lame joke!" He spoke an Ancient Hylian word for "Friend" and pushed the door open. It had been ajar just a crack. Lucina's heart quivered. That _was_ Mother's voice!

Link found Robin sitting in her chair at her desk full of maps, notes and diagrams reading a book with a mustard-yellow cover. She didn't even look up. "What do you need, Link?"

Link cleared his throat.

Robin looked up and immediately tossed her book over her shoulder. It bounced on the floor twice before its spine broke and lay with scattered pages. "Lucina?" she gasped.

Lucina stepped forward. Robin practically lunged toward her and brought a hand to her face, touching her cheek as if to see if she was real. Link stepped back and watched the tears glisten in two sets of eyes. The pair grabbed each other in a fierce hug.

"What are you doing here?" they asked each other at once. "Does this mean it's time to go home?" the also asked at once.

"I found Lucina in the extra weapons storage room," Link said, trying to be unobtrusive. "I haven't gotten a chance to explain much to her. After I asked a few questions, I thought it best to bring her here."

"Where are we, Mother?" Lucina inquired. "And, when you came back, why didn't you come home?"

Link could see an immediate understanding flash in Robin's eyes. She knew just how little he'd gotten through to her daughter in that moment. She shot him a look that almost said "You weasel for not explaining this and leaving me with the hard part!" but it was also a grateful look, like she knew that she would be the best person to break the news.

"Lucy…. We are both in a country no one can come back from," the snowy-haired woman said softly.

"What do you mean, Mother? I just woke up here. Wherever we are seems to be full of people of kinds I've never seen before, but surely, there has to be swift horses or ships! Have you been held against your will?"

"No, honey," Robin said slowly and with a rueful smile, "How long have I been… gone?"

"Three years, Mother," Lucina informed. "Father still sends out search parties and goes himself when he can from time to time. Morgan has missed you terribly. Ylisse is stable. The country has been at peace for all this time, but we've never been fully able to celebrate it. We need you back, Mother!"

Robin chuckled softly. "It would sound like my job as a war-tactician is obsolete, then, just as I wished it to be."

"Morgan still studies!" Lucina added.

"I'm sure he does. Listen, Lucina? I have been gone for three long years… but the truth is… I am still gone."

"What do you mean? Mother, you are standing right here!"

"And you are standing here with me. I did hope that you wouldn't have come to a place like this so young. I take it you don't remember anything drastic leading up to Mr. Link finding you."

"No, I don't."

"A situation I am all too familiar with. Did he tell you that there are better places to nap than on the ground?" Robin gave her a wink.

"… No," Lucina answered. "I kind of… attacked him with Falchion."

Robin turned immediately to the Hylian. "Were you injured?"

"I remain unhurt," Link answered.

"Lucy, you are losing your touch."

"Hey!" Link protested.

"Oh, you can take it and you know it!" Robin ribbed. "Link here may not look it, but he's one of our seniors. He is the best person to listen to get to know the ropes around here, even better than me. Lucina, dear, listen to me." With this, Robin planted her hands firmly upon her daughter's shoulders, as if to anchor her. "I am not home because I was never drawn home. I am still waiting. I am still dead, Lucina. I am afraid that if you are here, it means that so are you."

"What?" Lucina yelped. "What… what do you mean?"

Link leaned against a wall by the door. "This is a way-station for the afterlife," he said as coolly as he could. "It serves special souls – you know, like your mother, who is hoping for a resurrection, and like me – I'm a cyclical-reincarnate fate-and-duty-bound to my world. Some of us move on to something hopefully more interesting waiting for us. Some of us go back into life. However, if you're here, it means that in whatever world you came from, you're a corpse."

"Link!" Robin scolded. "Tactless!"

"Truth."

"I… I just don't understand!" Lucina protested. "I don't remember dying! I don't remember being wounded! I don't remember anything but setting out to take a journey that would keep me from interfering with the life of my younger self!"

"Easy…" Robin said, embracing her time-displaced child.

"Mother…" Lucina whispered as she returned the embrace, seeking to bury herself in the magic-scented fabric of Robin's big coat.

Link quietly left the Roost to let the pair weep together.

* * *

 _ **To be continued…**_

 _I needed a chapter-title for this and was listening to the Shadow of the Colossus soundtrack at the time and thought that one of the song-titles fit in a poetic way._


	3. Fall from Heaven

**TALES OF THE WAY-STATION**

 **3: Fall from Heaven**

The young angel did not know how he'd gotten involved in this mess. No, he knew why he was involved in this mess – he was here because Viridi had gotten herself involved. Dark Pit was only working with her for his own ends – namely, she powered his flight and he was her muscle. Sure, she had Cragalanche, Phosphora and Arlon already, but she just thought having a "loyal angel" was so gods-damned "cute." If there was one thing that the raven-winged angel was sure of, it was that he was not "cute."

Dark Pit had hoped that in this work that he would one day get to meet up with some lackey lesser god or goddess that he could kick the stuffing out of to get the power of flight by his own accord back. He was certain that he'd find Pandora again or someone else when they were weak and he was strong – and then, it was on his own again, just like he was always meant to be. Okay, so maybe the way he was "meant to be" by way of the Mirror of Truth was to be just some knockoff evil copy of goody-goody Pit, but things had gone a little differently and he wasn't much for having his destiny handed to him.

The gods were at war again. Viridi had put in her forces with Palutena, just like the last one. Hades had been put down and Medusa was no longer a threat, but some of those that everyone had thought of as merely minion-partners to the two had risen up in force. Thanatos of all the gods had chosen to try to take over the earth and to upset the balance. Dark Pit had said "He's the God of Death, what did you expect?"

The Goddess of the Earth and Living Things and the Goddess of Light, Humanity and Wisdom really hadn't thought much of "Ol' Thanny-Poo." He had been weakened in the last war, similar to what had been done to Hades (though with not as much power behind the final strike). He was also a flighty thing that loved theatrics more than anything – not the kind of god that would start a campaign of conquest without leadership or partnership from another of the gods. How he had come back into physical form after suffering defeat was anyone's guess. In any case, Thanatos had gathered enough minions to swarm over the land of the living. He'd even managed to gain human alliances through one kind of trickery or another to bring about a war that raged across an entire continent.

Palutena, for her part, was certain that Aries must be involved, but she had no proof and therefore, no reason that was considered legal among the Council of Gods to strike at him in his own domain for the sake of the protection of hers. She was left only to defend her followers, Viridi being her only alliance due to the need to save the Earth from the ravages the war was causing.

Pit was fighting hard, of course. Dark Pit sped on, trying to catch up to him. Their destination for the day was a seaside town beset by monsters that Thanatos himself was en route to. The black-winged angel could see the glow of blue from Pit's wings in the distance. He had to push to keep up.

"Pittoo," as Pit called him, had been making visits to Skyworld every once in a while, when he could. Dark Pit hated the nickname that everyone knew him by, but when it came from Pit, he hated it a little less. From Pit, like most things, the name was innocent – a term of affection. The lighter half was the only being in existence that seemed to have any true respect for him. Dark Pit couldn't help but return it in his own way. They were two halves of a whole. While he did not know, anymore, since he'd been "growing his own soul," if anything bad happening to Pit would cause the same thing to happen to him, Dark Pit still found that he wanted to protect Pit. They were brothers, in a way – twins with an inexplicable connection. Oh, he still wanted to kick his tail in a fair fight. That never changed.

As he listened to the chatter of obnoxious goddesses issuing commands in his head, he pushed on through the wind and the clouds, shooting down assorted flying Underworld minions.

He would never admit to it, but it felt good to be fighting alongside Pit again.

* * *

"Ha, ha!" Link shouted triumphantly as Lucina countered his strike on a basic version of a stage called "The Battlefield" that served as a training yard. "We've seen you on the Sandbags, on the Run and you're doing so well against me!"

"What…" Lucina huffed as she slid in for a strike at him, "is this meant to prove? You said that I was being analyzed, correct?"

Link countered and then lowered his sword, signaling time for a break. "Yes. We only get a limited set of attacks on the official stages. The Hands need to know what your best moves are. I'm surprised you've been up to pushing it this early. You've only been here a week."

"This place is still strange to me," Lucina said, "and I do not feel like I am dead, so it is difficult for me to fully believe it, but Mother is here and that is enough. Besides, sparring with you is a lot of fun, Link. I really can believe that you had a career as a hero."

Link blushed slightly. "Eh," he replied, "It's more the role got trust upon me. You haven't even met everyone yet. I heard that you had some trouble talking with Marth."

"I wish I'd had more to say…" Lucina began, "I did not want to flood him with questions upon questions… especially since…"

"I'm sure he understood, especially with your mother handling translations. It's weird. We never could figure out why the airborne translation-system doesn't work for him and he's stuck speaking in that ancient language of his. It doesn't work for some of us… Most of the Pokemon… it never worked for Mr. Game-and-Watch… and a few others. You get to pick up on bits and pieces of everyone's language when you hang around long enough." Link smiled sweetly. "From what he said to me last time we spoke, I do believe Marth told me that he was 'very proud' of his lineage."

Lucina blushed. "I fear that I misused his fine name in my time, but it did give me strength."

"Well," Link said, "The way you are coming along, Master Hand might even decide upon a Final Smash for you soon."

"A 'Final Smash?' What's that?"

"Oh, it is a special attack that each warrior gets – a fancy move that draws upon their full-power. It's for theatrics, mostly. It's a recent invention. You see, when you're in battle a strange, glowing ball will sometimes appear and hover around the stage. It's a tough little bugger and we'll all try to break it. The person who gets the final hit is imbued with power to launch an attack that will just obliterate any nearby opponents. Some of us get Smashes that work best against a single enemy, some are lucky get something that scores against the entire stage."

"Hmmm… Like a berserker-move or high-level magic?"

"Something like that," Link explained. "It's a flashy thing for the entertainment of the spectators. We do have an entire city that likes to watch us in action, you know. It usually has something to do with us, our journeys, the reason why were' supposedly honored souls and whatnot."

"And what's your Final Smash, Mr. Link?"

"I trap people in a cage of light that resembles the Holy Triforce and get to make a decisive swing with the Master Sword. Launches them right off-stage every time. I looove doing it against Ganondorf. If he breaks the Smash Ball, he turns into his super-powered beast-form, a giant boar. I've already explained that he's not like a Taguel of your world; it's more… something evil and twisted brought out by Power. Your mother doesn't have a Final Smash currently."

"Why not? She has been here for a few years…"

"She and Rob used to have one that they were supposed to have shared, but Master Hand is retooling it. What he'd given them before was a disaster."

Rob… Lucina had learned of his existence. Her mother had explained to her that an "Outrealm" counterpart of hers was here, but had not told her much about him. Robin had decided that she should hear his particular story first-hand. She had explained this much: That he was a version of her that had been born in a fragment-universe of their own and was 'if she had been born a male.' They'd made a few different decisions in life and Rob, apparently, hadn't suffered amnesia for most of his life as she had. As such, Mother referred to him like she'd refer to a brother.

It had been a whole week and she hadn't gotten her chance to talk with Rob. There was a good reason for this. The poor man hadn't been seen much around the Smash Mansion by anyone due to the fact that he was suffering a fierce cold and had been staying in his quarters trying to fight it off. He had other Smashers taking care of him, but Robin advised that it was no time for him to have 'drastic' visitors. Even she had been keeping her distance given her proclivity for catching illnesses. When Lucina asked why the dead could get sick, Link had given her the answer of it being the other side of the coin to having physical forms. No one would ever get anything permanently crippling here, but getting the occasional virus that made you feel half-dead had a way of making you feel alive. It was pretty much a common assessment that both of the Robins needed to learn to take care of themselves, anyway, and sometimes getting the sniffles did the trick to remind them of it.

Lucina caught sight of someone she was sure was him in the hall near the suite she was sharing with her mother the other day. The short man with the mustache and the green clothing and overalls getup she learned was named Luigi was handing off a service-tray of tea and bread to a skinny man with shaggy silver-white hair. That man had a lot of features that were similar to her mother's. He was also dressed in a hilarious set of pajamas with a print of fluffy bunny-rabbits on it. The man looked up at her with puffy red eyes that, in an instant, gained a look of abject terror. He took the tray from Luigi and bolted for the nearest door, which he closed behind him with decisive force.

Lucina wondered at the incident. Mother had told her that Rob's world had versions of everyone they knew – and that between them, he was the only one of the first-line of Shepherds that had been born a differing gender there. Of the children, Morgan was the only person of differing gender – Lucina had a hard time imagining her baby brother as a little sister AND as unrelated to her. A version of Lucina had lived in his world, too, despite having a different mother. Robin cautioned her daughter against over-thinking the genetics of it, since the many kinds of people who came to the Way-Station were proof enough that alternate universes were strange. Perhaps, Lucina thought, Rob had watched her other self die at some point, having failed to be able to save her. With the look of fear she'd seen, there was a distinct look of guilt. She knew from studying with her mother that a war-tactician's work was tough and even the best did not escape heartbreak. Then, there was the fact that she was here and not the version of her from his world. Maybe he was waiting for his own Lucina and she was a painful reminder that he'd have to wait longer to see her or any of his loved ones again.

"So… why does my mother not have this bit of theatrics?" Lucina asked Link as he shifted and tapped his sword against one of his boots.

"Well…." Link said, rolling the word, "They only ever used it once. The two of them were on stage together. It was a team-battle and they were paired up with Ms. Samus Aran and Mr. Fox McCloud respectively, and against each other… something about an 'old magic and high technology' battle. Master Hand does some interesting theme-battles. They were on one of the stages representing my world, which made it even weirder. Anyway… that's when a Smash Ball floated down and Robin – your Ma – busted it wide open with her jagged sword and its power went into her. She didn't know what was going on. She stood still, her eyes started glowing red… she started getting markings like extra red, glowing eyes down her face… They vanished and this enormous black dragon appeared behind the stage and let out a jet of black and purple flame, obliterating everything but her."

"OH, DEAR GODS!" Lucina cried.

Link ran forward to steady her. She sounded like she was in pain.

"It was just an illusion," Link said, trying to be assuring. "It was over once everyone recovered and was back on stage, but as it was still vanishing… well… your mother and Rob just dropped the fight, uttered –in tandem, mind you – the most ferocious war-cry I have ever heard from human lungs and rushed at it, like they both wanted to team up and kill the thing! They both ran right off the stage in their zeal and landed so hard on the 'ground' that they became trophies for a week. Master Hand officially retired that Final Smash that very day."

"Oh… Link! Has Mother explained much of our world to you? Her own history?"

Link nodded. "Yes. Everyone from your world's past, myself, and everyone who'd become close friends with your mother and her 'brother' marched into Master Hand's office to tell him how tactless that move was."

"Something like that… That was more than tactless, that was torture!"

"Master Hand tells us that he's going to make it up to them for that, that he's got a nice present for them waiting for them should they get the Smash Ball again, but… so far, whenever I've seen them in action, they tend to avoid anything that's suspiciously glowing."

"I would say so! I hope he doesn't give such a horrible move to me! I don't care about flash and entertainment!"

"He won't," Link said with a stone face. "If he gives you anything traumatic, I don't care if he's a god here; I will tear off his glove and rip his fingernails out by the roots!"

"… Link!" Lucina was blushing very deeply.

"Come on. Let's get something to eat."

* * *

It was said that new arrivals would appear in places that bore some familiarity for them so that they might wake up in comfort.

The Hands had not set up their system with the anticipation that anyone's greatest place of comfort would be, without any kind of craft surrounding them, the sky. There was no worse place to take a nap, particularly one of helpless true unconsciousness, than in the open air.

There was nothing more for a sleeping angel to do but fall.

"Hmmm…. I wonder what that is?" Link asked as he sat on the edge of a fountain in the courtyard in front of the Smash Mansion. "Better go check it out" he mumbled through a mouthful of roast cuccoo-leg. It wasn't merely chicken that he ate. The Smash cafeteria stocked meat derived – or least modeled after – the domestic fowl of his world. It was not just a matter of the "comforts of home," he'd explained to the newcomer he'd taken charge of; it was a matter of revenge. Pure. Sweet. Revenge.

Lucina had often wondered if her mother had narrowly escaped being mauled by a bear as a child and just did not remember it due to her amnesia because of the way she relished bear-meat (something that the cafeteria also provided, she learned, specifically for both of the Robins). Her mother enjoyed a good bit of bear and applesauce the same way Link enjoyed his cuccoo-thousands-of-ways – with a dark sort of glee. She found it hard to imagine the young hero being mauled by chickens, but apparently, it had happened. Bears as an animal-nemesis were much easier to understand.

She and Link had just seen a strange light streak across the southern sky.

"Was that a shooting star?" Lucina asked. "It's half-past noon and too bright!"

Link was squinting and shielding his eyes with one hand. "Hmmm… I've had experience with cosmic bodies you aren't supposed to see much of in the daytime come crashing down – in one of my lifetimes, anyway. Like I said, I'm going to go check it out…The streak looked like it went down into that meadow. It's not the same field I found your Ma in… but we're bound to find something."

"Right," Lucina said, standing up and walking with him. When he started into a run, she followed. They soon found themselves among waving grass, soft cattails and bristly weeds.

Something stuck out from the ground like a sail on a ship. It was a white wing, like one would find on some enormous bird. It was not only sticking up at an odd angle - it was twitching.

"Hey, kid!" Link called, hunching down over it. "Are you alright? Come on… open your eyes! Talk to me!"

Lucina raced over. Link had his hand on the face and neck of a boy with brown hair and a golden crown in the shape of laurel-leaves. The boy looked to be around the same age as her little brother. He was dressed strangely – a loose white garment with a fine red and gold trim and various golden bracers over his lanky limbs. The oddest thing about him was the fact that the wing she'd seen sticking up awkwardly belonged to him. The boy had two wings as white as a swan's jutting out of his back. He was laying on one. She had heard legends of bird-races before – her army comrade, Panne, had something about bird-folk at one point – but the princess of Ylisse was certain that this young man was entirely different.

His skin seemed to subtly glow and she felt a benevolent energy from him - something similar to what she'd felt around Tiki. This unconscious boy wasn't dragon-kin by his looks, but he looked like he belonged to some sacred realm.

"Looks like we got a new arrival," Link said, turning him around and laying him out so that he was on his back with his wings spread. Link began massaging the wings.

"What are you doing?" Lucina asked.

"I used to a little falconry when I was alive. Also, in one of my first lives, I had a giant bird for a partner that I would ride. To this day, I remember how to take care of wings. I don't feel any breaks… this is good. Big wings like this I'd expect to be pretty fragile. Actually, given the size of this kid's body, it'd be a miracle if he could actually fly with them. Glide, maybe… but they're small for his frame. The physics are all off."

"Is he… okay?"

"I think so. Or he will be."

"Ugh, ughhhhh!" the boy moaned. He stirred, his eyes sliding open, blinking several times. "Did Thanatos sit on me? Lady Palutena…. What happened? Did you douse me in monster-pheromone again? I thought I told you to stop doing that, it's not funny…"

The boy's eyes opened fully and he jumped back, flailing his wings. He crab-crawled back on his hands, away from Link. "What? Who are you?"

"We don't want to hurt you," Lucina assured.

Pit turned and looked at her. "Are you some goddess Lady Palutena sent to help me?" he asked.

"No," Lucina said with a soft shake of her head. "I don't know who your Lady Palutena is, but my name is Lucina and this is Lunk- er, Link! Are you hurt?"

Pit sat up straight and flexed his wings. He then folded them across his back and stood up. "I don't think so. Where am I?"

"That's going to be a little hard to explain," Link began. "You are among friends in a place where no one can hurt you. Well, okay, so we all beat the daylights out of each other on a regular basis, but nobody actually gets really hurt."

"I'm in a Light vs. Dark match?" Pit asked. "This doesn't look like one of the battlefields for it and where are the soldiers? The humans who play it are supposed to wear special armor."

Lucina put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm new here, too. We can be confused together."

"You have something in your eye."

"Uh… yeah… I'm okay. It's something special I was born with and I am very proud of it. What is your name? And, if it's not rude to ask, what are you? I don't meet many people with wings."

Pit took a deep breath and struck a pose. "I am Pit! Servant of the Goddess Palutena! Defender of Light! I am an angel who serves Justice! If there are any evil beings here, they'd better watch out!"

Lucina clapped and smiled. "You remind me of my cousin!" she proclaimed.

"Your cousin has wings?" Link asked.

"No," the young woman answered. "My cousin, Owain. He is into drama. He's all about the old stories and wants to be a great hero. He was actually a hero, more than he ever knew."

Pit suddenly got a look of panic on his face. "I was in a battle!" he yelped. "I don't know where I was last, but Lady Palutena was telling me and Pittoo to take care of things and he ran off one way and I was trying to catch up with him! Did we win? This is an awfully peaceful field. I thought were in a town, though…"

"Pittoo?" Link and Lucina asked as one.

"Oh, right..." Pit answered, smacking himself in the forehead. "Pittoo is my twin brother – only… don't call him Pittoo! He hates that! I call him that, but he doesn't let other people do that. He goes by Dark Pit or just Dark."

"Dark Pit?" Lucina asked, raising an eyebrow.

Link suddenly scowled. Memories of his shadow-self, the Dark Link - a spell created by Ganondorf or other evil forces to play upon his personal dark side came to him. It always had to be conquered in every life, even if it could never truly be killed.

"He looks just like me but he dresses in black and has black wings and black hair. Oh, his eyes are red, too! Not red like crying, but red like… red-red! He's sarcastic and mean sometimes and doesn't get along with people, but he's one of the good-guys, I swear!"

"We haven't seen him," Link said. "There is a lot to explain, but how about we start off by getting some food, okay?"

"Link… we just ate," Lucina complained.

"I bet Pit hasn't."

"Food?" Pit asked, his face lighting up. "What kind of food? Hamburgers? Ice cream? Cake?"

Lucina smiled. "Our place has any kind of food you could want," she assured. "Even bear-meat."

"Bear-meat?" Pit said, sticking his tongue out. "No thanks! Sounds gamey!"

"Oh, you'd be surprised at how good it can be if the bear ate the right things and if it's prepared properly," Lucina replied. "But, no, there are all kinds of other things, too. Like sweets."

"What are we waiting for? Let's go!" Pit said, getting ahead of them although he didn't know where he was going. "I'll have sushi and steak and lobster-miso-stew and cookies and a hot-fudge sundae with sliced bananas and….."

Link looked to Lucina. "I think we may have found Mr. Kirby a new little brother."

The princess laughed.

* * *

 **To be continued…**


	4. Birds of a Feather

**TALES OF THE WAY-STATION**

 **4: Birds of a Feather**

Dark Pit had a mouth full of mud. He groaned as he spit out a tuft of dirt and lawn. His arms were scraped and his wings were pointed upward, the quills catching a gentle breeze. He sat up, adjusted the golden laurels on his head and then stood up, brushing his dirtied front. He looked around himself at the open field and to a line of trees beyond.

Pit! Where was he? The last thing Dark Pit remembered….No… it as horrible! Was it all a dream? This wasn't Skyworld, nor was it Viridi's realm. The air didn't smell the same.

Dark Pit looked down a hill-slope to something that looked like an enormous manor-house in the distance. If Pit was anywhere, he'd probably be there if for no other reason than the probability of food being there. If nothing else, Dark Pit was sure he could beat some sort of information out of some rich jerk.

The raven-winged angel wandered down the road past tennis courts and swimming pools and some constructs that looked as technological as parts of the Aurum Hive. He saw lights like magic-spawn or holograms, suggestive of a variety of landscapes in the distance – washed out like watercolor. He found a door ajar in the mansion-type of building and entered it. Immediately, his ears were accosted by strange music – long, low and ominous.

"It sounds like one of those boss-battle buildups in one of Pit's games," Dark Pit groused. He was curious enough to trace the noise to an open room where a huge man was seated at an enormous pipe organ.

"Hey!" the small angel called, "Are you the owner of this place?"

The hulk of a man paused and turned around on his stool. By Hades he was ugly!

"Who are you?" the organist asked, "And… how dare you talk to me?"

"Eh," Dark Pit shrugged. "You sure hit every bump falling off the ugly wagon. I'm looking for my twin. Have you seen someone who looks like me but with white wings and a lot dorkier?"

"Heh, heh, heh," the man laughed. "Quite the spunk to speak in such a manner to Lord Ganondorf!"

"I don't care who you are! I just want to know if you've seen my stupid brother!"

"You must be a newcomer," Ganondorf said, rising from his seat. "Do not worry. If I see your brother, I will be sure to break his little wings. Now, begone!"

A dangerous glint flashed in Dark Pit's blood-red eyes. "You just said the wrong thing, pal!"

"Oh, ho, ho, does the little black hen want a fight?"

* * *

"Hey!" Pit said as he, Link and Lucina walked back to the Mansion grounds, "I think I might know you!"

"Hmm?" Link said. "Do you remember the last time you were here?"

Link had expressed to Pit that he thought he looked familiar. It had taken him a while to get his bearings, but a sudden memory from many years ago had flashed into his mind. Link was certain that Pit had made a brief visit to this place before. He had not recognized the angel at first, because it had been so long ago – perhaps even a lifetime ago – and Pit had made no indication of recognizing him. The Hylian thought that maybe he was dealing with another, similar-looking angel. As it is, if he was thinking of the same guy, Pit didn't seem to have any memory of this land.

"Huh? No!" Pit answered. "Aren't you Link, the Hero of Hyrule?"

"Yeah," Link answered. "Are you sure you don't remember meeting me?"

"I have all your games!" Pit chimed.

"Games?" Link questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah! The Legend of Zelda series! It's like, the best series ever except for mine."

"I don't think I understand."

"Awww," Pit groaned. "You're mortal, I guess… Mortals don't know about certain things." He looked to Lucina." Hey, I think I recognize you, too!"

"Really?" the princess asked.

"I mean… I never played your…um…world, but I think Lady Palutena has! Strategy games are a little too heavy for me but she showed me her game once."

"Well," Lucina said brightly, "My life-story did involve a lot of war… and strategy. I let Mother handle most of that part."

As they approached the housing complex, noises wafted in the air.

"Ooooh, man, it sounds like a dust-up," Link said, grabbing his sword and shield and forging on ahead.

"A dust-up?" Lucina asked, withdrawing Falchion, just in case.

"Hey! Wait!" Pit cried, running up behind.

"Sometimes, fights break out outside of the Stages," Link explained, "They can get pretty bad… people get hurt more than on the Stages, takes 'em longer to heal. Still, no one's gonna die, but fights like that are against the rules and should be broken up as soon as possible!"

A distinct scream echoed from the interior of the Mansion.

"That sounds like Pittoo!" Pit said.

"If that's him he sounds like he's in trouble!" Link gasped. They made haste.

* * *

Indeed, a rather nasty brawl had broken out between Ganondorf and the stranger with black wings. The ruckus had caused several of the Mansion's residents to pile into the large music-room where Ganondorf had been practicing his art.

"Hmm," Robin said, sizing up the boy with the wings, noting his jumps and dodges as he swiped at Ganondorf with his dual-swords. She turned to Rob, who'd come up behind her. "I'd put two sacks of gold bullion on the little guy."

"I don't know," Rob sighed. "This is Ganondorf. He definitely has a size and muscle advantage on the newbie, plus, I don't think the boy knows what he's doing. I'll raise you three sacks."

"Hey! The Robins are brokering bets!" Toon Link shouted. "A purple rupee on the new guy!" he insisted, placing said object into Robin's open hand.

"Gotta go with the ol' porker," Falco said, passing currency into Rob's hands to manage.

Pikachu ran up, his cheek-pouches sparking. He made a Ganondorf-like scowl and pointed toward the huge man as he proffered an empty Master Ball.

Mario punched upward, causing some golden coins to materialize into existence. "I'll a' take the feather-duster!"

Soon, a large number of people had made wagers of varying values upon the fight. Dark Pit and Ganondorf, for their part, ignored them all. Ganondorf had seen this happen time and time again – if an unofficial fight happened, someone inevitably called out a bet and became an impromptu bookie as everyone pledged portions of the various currencies and valuable items they'd brought to the Stages from their worlds. The monies all had different trading rates in Smash City – the town outside of the Mansion grounds. Dark Pit, of course, was too focused on having a good fight to care about the hooting crowd.

Lucina entered the room just as Robin was calling out in cheer for Dark Pit and encouraging people to place their bets.

"Mother!" Lucina yelped as she witnessed this behavior.

Link came up behind. Before he had the chance to act as "police" to even try to break things up, Dark Pit stabbed Ganondorf right in his lingering wound-scar from the Sword of the Sages. The sorcerer screamed as he immediately formed into a large, stiff trophy. Dark Pit stepped back, dumbfounded. "What in the Underworld just happened?" he asked.

"Pay up," Robin said to Rob as he unhappily handed over his portion of "the pot" to her. She, in turn, divided up winnings with everyone else who'd bet on Dark Pit for the win.

"Gambling on something like this, Mother?" Lucina scolded, appalled.

"Oh, it happens all the time, dear," Robin answered. "Look! Now we have a lot of money to go dress shopping."

Rob was shying into the shadows, pressed against a wall, eyeing Lucina warily.

"Oh, Rob!" the young woman said when he caught her eye. "I see you're feeling better."

"Yeah," he said softly, with a shy nod.

"That's great! I've been wanting to meet you!"

"I still have a bit of a sniffle, but I suppose we can talk somewhere quieter."

Meanwhile, Link was sticking out his tongue at the statue of Ganondorf. Dark Pit had grabbed a marker out of Jigglypuff's hand and had proceeded to begin drawing on the trophy. Link found a pen in one of his pouches and followed suit. Upon the helpless man went a silly curled "bandito" mustache as well as a drawing of a pig on his forehead. Link drew a little picture of the Master Sword on his chest with "Sword goes here" written with an arrow toward the man's prominent scar. Dark Pit doodled a few more interesting images and words.

Link was beginning to like the kid already.

Doctor Mario – Mario's "cousin" from another universe and one of the resident medics – wandered in, ready to treat any injuries incurred from the off-stage fight.

"I don't think the winged boy has anything more than a few scuffs and scrapes," Robin said.

"Oh, Ganondorf is a' gonna wake up angry," the doctor lamented. "He looks like he'll probably only be out a day. If he knows what Link is a' doin', the poor kid's gonna get broken in half again."

He glanced back at what Dark Pit was drawing.

"Oh, Mamma-Mia… is that what I think it is?"

"Well, he's quite the little artist, isn't he?" Robin said, "At least when it comes to things that neither I nor Lucina have!"

"It looks a little diseased," Rob added. "And is that supposed to be a line of liquid going into Ganondorf's mouth?"

"Is the left cheek of the face a proper placement for that kind of thing?" Lucina openly asked.

Pit came barreling in, finally having caught up and pushed through the crowd. "Pittoo!" he cried.

"Pit?" Dark Pit asked, dropping his marker and turning at his voice.

"Pittoo! You're okay! I was worried! I woke up in a field with the guy in green and the woman in blue trying to help me! I don't know how we got separated or where we are… and I can't raise Lady Palutena on the com-link, but… you're here and you're alright!"

Dark Pit gently regarded him, his eyes soft and sad. He walked calmly up to him. "Yeah," I'm aright," he said.

Before Pit could tackle him in a hug, Pittoo punched him right in the nose and laid him out on the floor.

"What?" Pit asked, sniffing up his slightly bloodied nose. "What did you do that for?"

"WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?" Dark Pit roared.

"Huh? I didn't mean to! I don't even know where we are!"

Dark Pit began panting. "You… the battle! Thanatos struck you and…I was holding you and you… and you…"

The boy heard a gentle, lulling music behind him. That pink puffball-thing he'd taken the marker from was singing some kind of very soothing song. The black-winged angel felt suddenly very sleepy. He crumpled to the floor and doubled over, shielding himself with his wings as he began to softly snore.

"Thank you, Jiggly," Link said as he picked the young man up. "Pit, we'll go to one of the spare rooms. You are both owed an explanation. He'll be alright. He's just going to rest for a little while.

"Right," Pit said, wiping his nose as he stood up and followed Link.

* * *

Lucina followed Rob to his room, named, to her discomfort, "The Dragon's Den." Many of the people here had given personalized names to their quarters. She stayed in "The Robin's Roost" with her mother. Link's place, which he kept alone because his young counterpart preferred to room in a collective chambers with some of the other child-fighters who were his best friends – was called "The Temple of Time." Link explained that it had to do with him once having taken "a really long nap" in sacred place by that name back in his home-world. Rob explained that his quarters-name was "kind of self-deprecating," but was chosen because it sounded more "badass" than the name he'd first thought of – "The Warren." He wished to come across as a formidable fighter. Robin was planning to join them, but she was called away by Master Hand to an official match – and probably also to explain initiating the technically-illegal gambling earlier, not that Master Hand had ever done anything to anyone more than light scolding for that activity.

"You really should have named this place The Warren," Lucina commented upon entering Rob's living room. She noted the various figurines and sculptures that were on the shelves – the bookends and the fireplace mantle-pieces. Rabbits: there were, everywhere, figures of rabbits.

Rob picked one up off of a writing-desk. "Well this one isn't actually a rabbit. You'll probably see this guy on one of the stages based off Mr. Mario's world. This is a Nabbit. Oh, and this one here is from one of the worlds that Link's lived in – a young man in a disguise who goes by the name of Ravio."

"Still… bunnies everywhere. It's a rather interesting kind of thing for a man to collect. It's cute, like an old lady and her cat figurines."

"There are stranger things to collect," Rob said, sniffling softly into a handkerchief, dealing with the remnants of his recent infirmity. "One of the Mii-Fighters from the city who hangs around here sometimes collects animal skulls."

Lucina contemplated a little brown juvenile rabbit and set it back on the mantle of the cold fireplace.

"It's a reminder of my family," Rob explained. "Panne exists in your world, correct?"

"Um… yes. The Last Taguel, until she had a child."

"In my universe, I married her. We had a boy named Yarne who took after her and a little girl who had more of my human features named Morgan. She could still transform, though."

"Yarne exists in my world," Lucina replied. "Though he was a single-litter. In my universe, Morgan is a boy and is… well, he's my little brother."

"So I have been told," Rob said, "Your mother and I are very close – like a brother and sister. She's told me a lot of how things turned out in your realms."

"Mother hasn't told me much about you at all, um… Sir Robin?"

Rob got down upon his knees before Lucina and gently took both of her hands in his. The man looked up at her with a look in his eyes that Lucina could only think of as "pure grief."

"Sir Robin, what are you doing?"

"Th-thank you…" Rob began, his voice shaking. "Thank you, Lucina! I know that I'm not thanking the right version of you, but I can thank you on her behalf right now."

"For what?"

"Thank you for killing me, Lucina. Thank you for freeing me."

Lucina recoiled and almost tripped into the fireplace. "Rob?"

Rob shrunk back. He sat in the chair at his desk – similarly strewn with paperwork as her Mother's was. "I had no wish to frighten you, Lucina," he said. "I'm sorry. This is coming out all wrong." He rested his elbow on the desk's top and his forehead in his palm and looked miserable.

"It's okay!" Lucina offered. She sat down in an armchair. "I just want to know why you are acting so strangely around me. I've noticed those looks of fear you've been giving me and I want to get to the bottom of it. And this 'killing you' business?"

Lucina bit her lip, remembering the moment she met her mother with a sword in a field awash in a golden sunset. It was after she's seen her mother become temporarily brainwashed – or body-puppeted – or something – leading to the loss of the divine treasure – the Fire Emblem. Lucina had fears of losing an even greater treasure and of all the elements of her darkened future falling into place. She did not want to kill Mother, but she felt like she was backed into a corner and absolutely had to. That was a unique kind of pain: Feeling it necessary to kill someone you actually truly love. Mother made it worse, of course, by trying to make it better – she didn't continue to fight or fuss. Instead, she'd tried to speak words of comfort to her. Lucina was not used to killing anyone or anything that accepted their fate. Her enemies were always armed and were always enemies. They didn't stand with their eyes closed, face tilted to the last of the sun's warming rays offering her a perfect shot of their neck or their heart.

In the end, she was glad she'd "chickened out." Father of course, had come just in time to save them both.

No one had breathed a word of this incident to Morgan.

"I am not sure how I died in the end," Rob explained with a sigh, "but I always assumed it had to be you. I suppose Cynthia was a possibility. She was your sister in my universe, but I can't see that girl doing much but tripping over her own shadow. You see, you were the last bearer of Falchion and the… the only one left who could beseech Naga…"

That's when the name above the chamber-door became apparent to Lucina. She jumped up out of her seat.

"You became Grima?"

She was tempted to draw her sword but refrained, reminding herself silently of the place they were in and more so of her mother's apparent trust of this man. There had to be more to the story.

Rob gave her the saddest nod in all the known universes. "I… I suppose that things may have happened as they did in Robin's universe," he said slowly. "Perhaps another me killed me – but I like to think it was you. I think you deserved to make the fatal strike more than anyone. I also think that if I killed me, that my spirit would have fused with that other self somehow. I don't have any evidence of this, it's just a hunch."

"You…became…Grima."

"I am sorry. It happened in just a moment, too. I was… I was being puppeted… by Validar and…unlike your mother, no one had foreseen things for me. I had no warning when he used my body and my magic to kill Chrom. Chrom…told me to run with his dying breath, but I could not. I was just frozen in place. It was then that the voices and the darkness that had been pulsing in my skull just took over. My heart was weak… seeing my best friend… lying there… Everything had been lost. It was that window that awakened that terrible dragon-soul. As for the rest of me, I was trapped in a dark place. I could sense nothing and feel nothing and yet I was _aware_ of the nothing." Rob sighed deeply. "I had little moments of other kinds of awareness, all too brief. I'd try to fight back when I smelled something familiar or heard a familiar voice. I'm pretty sure that the last voice I heard was yours. After that, I woke up here and was told by Master Hand that he and Naga had 'retrieved' me. I really don't know what to make of it all."

Lucina had the look of someone on-alert. "With you here… is there any chance of Grima coming here?"

"I don't think so," Rob said with a shake of his head. "The Hands keep Ganondorf here –and he's one of the chief agents of evil in the Links' worlds, but he carries only a fragment of an ur-evil force. I'm pretty sure that I am some kind of "base-soul" – only the human part. Here. Look."

Rob carefully unwrapped both of his hands of their magic-channeling gloves.

"Clean," Lucina said, her voice taking on a hint of relief. "They're clean... there's no mark on the right. Your hand is like Mother's – free of the brand."

"Yep. So, I think I'm going to be okay. I thought you should know the truth. I regret not having the courage to bring it to you sooner."

"It's alright," Lucina said. "My father never thought it was Mother's fault that she had a proneness to being hijacked by things due to her blood. We were able to change fate together. Provided that you are really the spirit of the human, Rob, then… I suppose you are here to gain some kind of peace."

"That's what Robin says," Rob said with a gentle smile. His expression then immediately soured. "I do not have memory problems to her extent. There are a lot of things about my life that I remember and some memories I long to wash away."

"Mother wants to regain all she can. She says that one should be courageous in facing the truth."

"I do not know what happened to my children," Rob said, "but one memory I ache to erase is my knowledge of the flavor of Panne's blood against my jagged dragon-teeth."

Lucina, shaking from a small amount of fear at the prospect of getting close to someone who had, for a time, at least partially been Grima, swallowed a lump in her throat, walked over to Rob, reached out for him and hugged him.

* * *

 _ **To Be Continued…**_


	5. Casualties and Consequences

**TALES OF THE WAY-STATION**

 **5: Casualties and Consequences**

Lucina and Rob decided to go to the viewing area set aside for the resident fighters to view a match. If they were lucky, they would be in time to catch Robin in action. As it turns out, luck was on their side. The tactician and the princess sat down together with a few of the other resident fighters who'd decided to watch that day. Random people from the city ringed the arena on the other side.

These stages were very strange – they and the seating surrounding them seemed to exist in another reality that did not interfere with the space of the main living-areas or nature. Some of the "Smashers" described them as "virtual" while others described them as "magical." Lucina was definitely in the camp that saw them as magic – that being the best way that she could understand their nature in relation to the world she'd come from. This particular setup was a clockwork coliseum that had an appearance of familiarity to her world. It looked a bit like Arena Ferox, but there were notable differences.

"Oh, look, there's Mother!" Lucina exclaimed, jumping up in her seat to clap as a summoning circle appeared and her mother hopped out of it, a Levin sword in hand. Three other fighters appeared, each with their own flourishes. The signs superimposed upon the air in panels of light told everyone that this was a winner-take-all battle between the four of them, no alliances. Princess Zelda was there as was Mario. Marth rounded things out. Lucina might have rooted for him if her mother wasn't in this game. This was actually the first time she'd seen her fight in one of these way-station battles.

Music for the match started up and Lucina froze like a rabbit that had just sighted a dog.

"Lucina?" Rob asked beside her. "Is there something wrong?"

"The music… it's familiar to me," was all she said.

The song that played was one that people in this world shouldn't have known about. It meant that the Hands had greater connections to Ylisse than she'd thought – certainly more than she'd wanted those mysterious entities to have. Sometime after the defeat of Grima and the ending of the last war, some of the more artistically-inclined Shepherds had gotten together to create an opera about their experiences. Laurent was supposedly just working on a novel and Owain would have likely done the same if he hadn't started talking with Olivia, Inigo and Brady, who wanted to do something theatric together. Lucina had known about it, for they interrogated her for opinions regarding "her character." She certainly was never going to get up on stage herself.

The main attraction to this yet-unfinished play was going to be the music, of course. Brady worked tirelessly to write compositions not just for the violin – his specialty – but for an orchestra. Owain handled lyrics and lines. Olivia and her son handled dance and movement. They hadn't gotten to the point of designing sets, but they expected to rope Libra into supervising the background painting when the time came. Of the songs that Brady wrote and did initial performances of with what musicians he could get together, there was an entire set dedicated to the late Lady Robin. Lucina recognized the one playing as an unmistakable part of the "Id" set – the "final song" that Brady had titled "Purpose."

And this seemed to be a complete version of it – one with chanting in the background and everything. While she recognized the basic composition, Brady hadn't even gotten as far as this yet!

Mother was fighting to the song her friends had dedicated to her final battle and she didn't even know it!

Lucina noted the fighting styles. She and Marth were similar – no wonder some of the people here were calling her a "clone" of her ancestor… Mario fought, mostly, with brute force. When he got someone into a corner, then came the uppercut and sometimes a spinning wallop. He used an odd little fire-spell for distance, but excelled with the use of his body. Zelda used various forms of magic that had to be summoned in particular ways, which forced her to be slightly more strategic, but she could be pretty rough and wild with her physical attacks, particularly a forceful kick. Mother seemed to be almost at a disadvantage. Her tome-spells, unlike Zelda's naturally-occurring magic, took a degree of concentration to muster and charge up. She switched between swords since the Levin was easily-spent and she carried a bronze sword on her belt as a backup. This did seem to suit her just fine, however, as she had a strategist's mind and, much like she had in Ylisse, Pelegia and Valm, had perfected the art of timing and knowing the right kind of strike.

"Just in case you were wondering," Rob told Lucina, "her style is identical to mine. Watching her fight is the same as watching me fight, except for the pretty pigtails catching the wind."

"I've got a little more range in the power of my sword-strike than the Hero-King," Lucina commented, "Not that I've been doing more than training yet."

She sat back for half a minute before interesting things began happening.

"Mother just hit Lady Zelda in the nose with a spent tome!"

"Eh, throwing the book at 'em sometimes works!" Rob piped in.

"Zelda is… such grace…" Lucina trailed off. "Link can't think too much of me, can he? He's served under her and … been with… her…"

"Is someone jealous?" Rob teased. "I'm not really sure what Link's relationship is to her, myself, other than service – at least on their last go-round in the land of the living. They've had countless lives together, but it doesn't mean that they'll always have the same relationship. They seem a little aloof to each other… at least from what I've seen in the time that I've been here."

"I suppose that's true… But… she's so pretty… much more of the 'princess' type than I am."

Mario and Zelda knocked each other out of the running. Rob informed that this was a standard knockout – a double-KO and that since it did not entail "fatal" wounds, they'd be around and kicking somewhere around the Mansion – a little bruised and with wounded pride, perhaps, but otherwise well, awake and aware.

"Points and the artificial damage system at work," he said.

"Ah," Lucina noted. "There's no blood. You'd think with how fierce things have gotten that there would be visible damage."

"Nope." Rob shook his head. "If anything happens outside the stages, yeah, we get hurt in the usual ways, but on stage… the audiences supposedly found things like blood too jarring. We are supposed to be fighting for fun – not in a real war."

That was the moment that Marth swept around the lady-Robin. With a smooth motion, he thrust his version of Falchion straight into her chest. Lucina found it surreal to watch – a sword sliding straight into her mother's heart without any blood. Robin choked and gagged, surprised and pained. Lucina was certain that she heard Marth speak – in the language common to the Mansion that he usually could not always use clearly. It was a whisper, but the sound equipment picked it up just enough for Lucina to pick it out.

"I am sorry."

Robin fell to the floor of the stage as Marth withdrew his clean blade and looked, for several seconds, like an ordinary corpse.

"MOTHER!" Lucina screamed.

Robin's form glowed and vanished as Marth was congratulated as the victor.

"Mother! Mother!" Lucina cried, utterly distraught. Rob grabbed her to steady her. Visions were coming back to the princess in blue – first a memory of confronting Mother in the field, how she had imagined making an easy, merciful kill like Marth had just done. Guilt came crashing down on her. Then there was the memory all over again of Mother fading away after having landed the fatal blow to Grima in the form of the doppelganger – the hopelessly infected skin and flesh of Lucina's true mother.

"It's alright, Lucina!" Rob assured. "Easy, easy! She's not dead, remember? Well, she is, we all are, but… you know what I mean!"

"It's just…" Lucina said, catching her breath. "I've… I've lost her before… and she just got stabbed in the chest…"

"Sssssh, Lucy… ssssh."

Rob's manner was so calming that she couldn't help but feel some ease washing over her. He was like Mother in that way, though the man did seem to be on a slightly more calm-keel as a counterweight to Robin's slightly more aggressive nature.

"Where… where is she?" Lucina choked.

"She probably materialized in your shared chambers," Rob explained. "That was definitely a trophy-wound. Let us go there. You can see that she'll be alright."

They exited the virtual stage-area and wandered down the corridors to the Roost. Sure enough, in the space next to her desk there was Robin in still, trophy-form. She was slightly crouched down with her mouth open in a silent war-cry. She was dispensing a frozen form of a Thoron spell.

"Mine is just me standing while holding a sword and a Thunder-tome, or so I'm told," Rob said, keeping a respectful distance. "It's hard to tell anything when you're frozen, especially when you're supposed to black out when it happens."

"Why are her eyes alight?" Lucina asked, shaky around the trophy. "I feel like she's looking right at me."

Rob got a sudden, panicked look. He cupped Robin's cheek in one of his hands. "Robin… please… don't do this to yourself! You don't have to stay awake for Lucina! She'll be just fine! You know what it does to your mind when you try to stay awake!"

"She's awake?" Lucina asked in horror, "She's awake and she's stuck like this?"

Rob nodded. "I'm sure Link has told you about trophyfication."

"Yes," Lucina said bluntly." He says that he sometimes stays awake, but that you two have a tendency to lose yourselves a little." She then went to her mother's trophy and clapped it on one shoulder. "Mother. Listen. I am fine. I know you're going to come out of this. Don't put yourself under distress for me. Please go to sleep. I remember how whenever you got nasty wounds you'd spend a day or two sleeping in camp while our healers worked on you."

"Knowing that she is just like me, Vaike and Gaius were guarding the bed to keep her from getting up and working."

Lucina nodded. "The same, though Noire hovered around her a lot, too. Mother, please."

The eyes on the trophy lost their luster and their "watching" feeling.

"Good," Rob said. "She's unconscious now."

"How long will she be like this?"

Rob tapped his chin with a finger in thought. "Her body was intact save for the 'killing-wound' so she'll probably not be in trophy form for more than a day. You have to sustain truly horrific injuries to be stuck for more than that."

"Like you both did… during the day you saw your Final Smash?" Lucina asked cautiously.

"It's not the fall that kills you," Rob joked.

* * *

The sky was angry, a glowing scarlet of a particularly strong sunset streaked with clouds of black smoke. The ocean lapped upon the sandy shore like blood flowing from a living wound. Feathers lay scattered about everywhere, black and white.

"Pit-pittoo…g-g-go…" the shivering angel said as his dark doppelganger held him. The boy's wings were ruined – not quite as badly was when they'd been burnt down to a few jagged bones when he'd saved his twin from the ashes of the Chaos Kin – but nearly as bad. The bones were fully-clothed in flesh and feathers, but they were bent and blood flowed from tears in the skin, staining the soft pearl-white of the plumage. There was a horrific burn that had struck Pit in the back and had come out through his chest, charring the front of his toga.

The blue-eyed boy grit his teeth. "Go! I said go!"

"I'm not leaving you!" Dark Pit said roughly. "I am not going to incur this kind of debt again! If you can't get up and fight, I am going to stay and fight for you! End of story! Keep calling your goddess!"

He laid Pit down on the bloody sand and took a stance over him, the bladed halves of his silver bow out and ready in an instant.

"You're going to get killed, Pittoo! And remember what Lady Palutena said! She might not be able to bring us back from this battle if we do!"

"Well, you're too heavy for me to carry right now, even if I could fly," Dark Pit said with a twitch of one of his wings, shivering in injury. "You need to lay off the donuts. Aaaaand… our dippy goddesses seem to be out to lunch… so, what else am I to do?"

He noted the look on Pit's paling face. "You can run…" came a whisper from dry lips.

"No, I am NOT leaving you!"

"Pittoo….behind you…"

* * *

"He's having a nightmare!" Pit exclaimed from his place beside his brother's bed, "I thought that pink happy strawberry marshmallow-thing was supposed to give him sweet dreams!

Dark Pit twitched and fidgeted. Pit debated with himself as to whether or not it was a good idea to wake him up.

"No," Link said, heading off a bad idea. "It's better if he wakes up on his own, especially if he's dreaming of his death."

"Dreaming of his death?" Pit pondered, "I don't understand."

Link casually crossed one of his legs over the other in the chair he was sitting in within the small room they'd found to rest in. "You had quite a time of it when you were here before – dreams of winged snakes and something you called ornes and a snake-haired woman…"

"Medusa," Pit answered, "but I was never here before. I'm pretty sure I would have remembered it."

"Oh, you were a great brawler!" Link said. "You were one of the best fighters on our stages."

"I was in a brawl? Did I have my bow? Eh. Even though I'm her guard captain, Palutena says that she couldn't imagine me in a melee."

"You weren't," Link said with a smirk. "Well, when our main tournament schedule was called the Melee."

"I'm confused."

"Many newcomers are," Link said. "I am sorry for messing with your head more than necessary. "You and your brother there might fall under special rules for this place, anyway – being that you're divine servants."

"Oh, Pittoo's no servant," Pit said with a shake of his head. "I am, I serve Lady Palutena proudly! But Dark Pit here… he's a rogue. Now, he's not a bad guy or anything, it's just… don't try to give him orders. He'll punch you in the face."

Link held up his hands. "Wasn't planning on it," he said. "I don't give the orders around here anyway. I'm just a wandering soul here between incarnations. You see, Mr. Angel, this land is a land of the dead."

"It sure doesn't look like the Underworld. It's a lot nicer and it smells better, too!"

"Well," Link began, "It's not exactly a permanent destination. It seems like the souls of warriors come here to find themselves before they are ready to move onto where they are supposed to be. We are given physical forms here, but we are all dead – the exceptions being some of the gods that visit here."

"The gods come here?" Pit asked.

"Some of them… and some beings that defy classification. Rosalina, for instance – she's a nice lady who cares for living star-beings. She's something of a cosmic-goddess. She didn't have to die to get here. She's here to visit her friends – the Mario Brothers and Princess Peach and the folks from their world. She's also here to fight on our battle-stages for fun."

"So this place _is_ a place for melees!" Pit exclaimed. "Oh, Pittoo is going to love that when he wakes up!"

Link laughed softly. "We fight for fun… maybe as a form of therapy… I don't know. We're a warrior-heaven, I guess, and we all feel the need to prove ourselves as warriors."

"So, except for gods and goddesses, everyone here is definitely dead?"

"Yup," Link said, nodding his head sagely.

"Pittoo and I can't be dead! We're angels! Whenever we die, Lady Palutena just brings us back to life! It's in our contract! Our dental plan may be awful but our general health plan is awesome like that!"

"You might be under some kind of special rules," Link explained, "being what you are. I'm pretty sure you were here before briefly but that you were called back by your goddess-"

"Lady Palutena!"

"Are you sure you don't remember it?"

"Nope. Then again, I just got done kicking Underworld tail and fighting the Forces of Nature and some alien-guys in an epic multistage war. There's bound to be some things I'd forget about. Oh! Oh… and there was another war that started up! The last I remember was that Dark Pit and I were trying to save a seaside city of humans who were totally helpless without us! I don't know how we suddenly got to here, but we really need to get back!"

"Not my decision, kiddo," Link said, shrugging his shoulders. "It's up to the beings that run this place and probably your goddess, too. I'm just hanging out here between lifetimes."

"Oh, yeah!" Pit said, "Because you're a character in games and your games have this SERIOUSLY confusing timeline and you have to be reborn a hero in lots of different times and places! How did you get your last Game Over? I remember this one time I was in the Water Temple and I forgot I had the iron boots on you and…"

Link gave the youthful angel a baleful glare. "I did not die last in a stupid way like that, I can assure you. And… wherever you are getting your information or imagination from, my lives were no game to me."

"Yeeesh, sorry, sorry!" Pit quickly apologized.

"It may be best to hold your tongue until people are willing to tell you their stories, or at least TRY not to touch upon the sore-spots." Link said. "Most of us are heroes here. As you've guessed, although there are villains, too. I'm a frequently-reincarnated spirit and tend to find this place a fun vacation between lifetimes. Lucina, whom you've met, is a newcomer, much like yourself. She has no idea how she died just yet, but she is a mortal, so she most certainly was killed at some point. Her mother sacrificed herself to save their world – she's that white-haired lady in a long coat and she's one of the few of us who remembers her death in detail and has no need for the dreams. I wouldn't ask her alternate-universe 'brother' anything at all about his demise if you know what's good for you and for him.

"My buddy, Mario's story changes every time he tells it. His brother, Luigi, has so far only said something about trying to save him being the thing that got him here. I put my Master Sword through Ganondorf, myself. I heard the dog drowned while trying to save his master from drowning and the duck that hangs out with him was one that his master had shot. I'm not sure if Mr. Pac-Man is an inter-dimensional god of some world far stranger than any I've known or if he is a murderer whose been dragged here out of a personal Hell of being continually chased by his four victims because he has a shot at redemption now…Lots of ill rumors. There are many spirits here. You're not going to get a straight answer from most of them."

"But how did you get here?" Pit asked. "It's just that you seem like you're both young and old. You look young, but you kind of talk like an old person."

"I usually die young," Link answered, "but this time, I got to grow old. My last life was rare and wonderful, although it was a bit lonely."

"You didn't have anyone to be with?" Pit asked, genuinely curious. "If you're like in the games I've played, you have partners and stuff."

At this Link winced and Pit quickly changed the subject.

"I've always had Lady Palutena. I used to have others of my kind, too, but they… they were all…" the boy shook his head sorrowfully. "But then Pittoo came along! He was born from a magic mirror that was trying to make a copy of me to serve the Underworld, but we broke the mirror together and he's… himself. He's a sourpuss and we fight each other all the time, but we've also fought together and we've saved each other's lives, too!"

"He means a lot to you," Link said with a smile. "I've not often had a lifetime with siblings. The other version of 'me' around here from a differing timeline had a little sister. I was always pretty jealous because I wondered what it would be like."

Dark Pit, who had been sleeping peacefully at this point, with a cease of his nightmare, cracked his eyes open. Immediately, he sat up straight in bed and glared hard at Pit.

"Alright!" he yelled, "Where is that pink squishy thing that put me to sleep? I only go to bed when I want to! Stop staring at me like a drooling idiot, Pit! Where in Hades are we?"

"Well, we aren't in his digestive tract!" Pit joked.

"Very funny! Your dip of a goddess is supposed to be watching these things! The last I remember I was… we were…"

Dark Pit suddenly paled. "Pit…"

"I'm okay!" Pit assured him. "I don't know what kind of dream you were having, but I'm here now!"

"Yeah, yeah," Dark Pit said, palming his forehead and grabbing his hair. "Just a dream… it was just a dream."

"Welcome to the Smash World," Link said gently. "It is a way-station between worlds and a place of rest for the dead."

Dark Pit's eyes widened. "No!" he gasped. "We. Are. NOT. DEAD!"

"We might not be, Pittoo!" Pit offered. "Mr. Link says that some beings don't have to die to get here!"

"We're not dead! We're not! If we are, the stupid goddesses weren't doing their jobs! I'm… I'm going out!"

"Pittoo!"

"Ravenwings!" Link shouted curtly. "Sit back down and calm down!"

"Shove it, horse-ears!"

Just as the angry, black-winged angel was about to storm out the door, he ran smack into the dress and thighs of a tall and stately figure.

"Aw, is poor little Pittoo cranky from waking up from his nap early?"

Link stared at the shapely form, the long green hair, the authoritative staff and the many dangling charms. The softly glowing halo and spectral wings also caught his attention. He wouldn't have been a man of the usual predilections if he had not also noticed the curvature of the rather sizeable chest, but truth be told, the Hylian found a smaller bust more suiting to his personal aesthetic. There was definitely an energy to this new arrival that was different than the typical mortal's spirit.

"Lady Palutena!" Pit chimed. His wings fluttered in joy and he was quick to take a knee before her while his dark-winged brother stood with a pout and folded arms.

"Where have you been?" Dark Pit demanded. "Did you fall asleep on the job?"

"No, it just took me a while to find this place again," Palutena answered. She pointedly addressed Pit instead of Dark Pit, motioning for him to get up off his knees. "I'd nearly forgotten this place. You came here for a little while when I thought you needed a break."

"So, Link was right! I have been here before!"

"Ah, yes," Palutena said. "Link of Hyrule. I trust that Din, Farore and Nayru have treated you well?"

"Well, when I am alive, they do," Link said. "If you're here to take care of these two, I really do need to see how Lucina is doing."

With that, Link let himself out of the room to go seek his latest charge. He wondered if she'd taken to viewing any matches yet.

"Lady Palutena!" Pit asked. "Where the foosballs are we? Link says that this is a land of the dead but that divine beings can visit it at will."

"Well, Pit, I'm here at will," the goddess answered.

"When do we go home? This place is weird, but I might like to see more of it!"

"Pit…" Palutena began. "You and Pittoo were in a war. You were…. You were…"

"Oh, great, now you're crying!" Dark Pit groused.

"Viridi and I lost track of you. We were surrounded and swarmed. We were sure you could handle things where you were, but…."

"So, we got killed, no big deal!" Pit said. "All you have to do is bring us back…

"… Lady Palutena, you can bring us back can't you?"

"There was so much damage….I…You belong to the Hands now…"

"You have to be able to bring us back! We have to finish the fight! We…"

The goddess wept.

* * *

 _ **To be continued…**_

 _(Female) Robin's trophy is an Alt. I have on the 3DS version of Super Smash Bros 4, so my description here is based on a real / in-game thing._

 _Apologies for taking a while on this. I started this chapter and it would have been done sooner if Life (and my brain, in following Life) hadn't decided to kick my ass recently. If I ever vanish from my fandoms and the Internet completely for whatever reason, I doubt it will be much-noticed anyway. It's hard to write when I'm down._


	6. Rude Awakenings

**Notes:** I've had one ordeal of a month in late April – into May. I almost went to the Way-Station myself due to a didn't-know-until-it-was-almost-too-late kidney issue that that was very serious. I spent over a week in the local hospital and, as of writing this, am still recovering from it. My last note on my last chapter (which I made with money issues and not being able to access the Internet in mind, as well as general mopiness - not dying of a sudden onset of illness - now frightens me). My advice is that if you have a fever that starts getting out of control, even if you think it's "just a stomach bug" – don't hesitate to go to the ER (even if you're worried about money) because they are required by ethics to save your life if they find a significant problem. (Especially take this option if you take a regular medication for an already chronic condition that is known to be tough in a particular organ or set thereof). Take care of yourselves out there, okay?

That said, I want to thank everyone who took the time and reviewed my very short _Fire Emblem: Awakening_ fanfic centric on dark mage Tharja, "I'll Save Your Bones." I wrote it as "a practice and a gauge for my brain to make sure I was still intact – or at least mostly-intact after my adventure." That said, I do not know if I will ever recover the plot-thread to work on my left in-progress FE:A fic "Arise" again, but "Way-Station" here was always meant to be a random-evolving sort of story.

* * *

 **TALES OF THE WAY-STATION**

 **6: Rude Awakenings**

Robin remembered how things went in an army-camp, namely, how it wasn't as much a risk for the enemy to kill you as it was for plain-out random disease. As such, with her map-planning, she tended to avoid crossing swamps and their miasmas – although she believed more in Miriel's budding theory of sickness carried by insects rather than "bad air." Avoiding where these insects lived in bulk, anyway, was a good idea. Robin watched for tainted water, tainted food and consulted the clerics, monks and apothecaries about interactions between treatments. She considered it a part of her job as a tactician – just taking care of her troops. There wasn't much she could keep track of, however, due to a known lack of knowledge. As it was, she was far too busy being a tactician at the time to try to dedicate herself to a cleric position.

Cordelia and Libra were interesting characters in one respect that she had observed. They had watched their comrades give up their lives so that they could make it to the front lines and warn their Exalt's core-army simply because they had the best sets of chances when they'd, respectively, been under attack. Through it all, the two of them seemed to have developed a grim attitude of "tomorrow is not guaranteed." They both seemed to have a strange peace about this, one that Robin failed to understand until she'd caught something that laid her out and introduced her to a world of pain she did not think possible.

It was one of those random diseases – one that blindsided a person more surely and swiftly than a battleaxe or any arrow or sword.

Robin remembered little of her personal ordeal. Chrom rubbed her back. Lissa and Ricken heated blankets with the soft glow of fire-tomes and laid them over her to help her control her shaking. She knew, even at the time, that she saw some things that were not real. Maybe they were subconscious visions from her lost memories? Morgan was screaming. Lucina said something she was sure in hindsight was weirdly-sarcastic, but it gave her hope anyway – and all the more when Chrom told her after the fact that the event had, in fact, happened and hadn't entirely been her fever-spiked imagination. It was nice to know to know that there was a little truth to her experience, especially after the days that followed whereby she insisted upon sitting up at a game-board trying to plan out strategies that, in later assessment made not a lick of sense against imaginary enemies. She kept flicking large ants that only she could see off the tables. It was nice that the Shepherds indulged her while Morgan and Laurent took over the real work for a while. (If she was in charge as she thought she was at the time, she would have gotten everyone killed and chopped into a fine mince and fed to the Valmese palace-dogs).

As she mended, got her mind back and assessed the experience, Robin decided that it may have been a deciding-factor in her giving herself to destroy Grima later on, or at least something that made it easier. The prospect of oblivion wasn't so bad when a looming Hell of one kind or another seemed far worse. In fact, she thought of herself as quite a selfish woman. Here she was, taking a break in an afterlife-hold while her family and friends back home were bereft and left to grieve. Even if it had meant an absolute ending, it had looked not so terrible –if not actually strangely inviting at the time to simply fell the dragon and have done with it. Robin decided that as much of a "beautiful sacrifice" as the people may have making out her actions to be, that she had made the easy choice.

Henry might have said it best when he assured troops on the battlefield that it "wasn't so bad."

After all, she didn't get a whole night's sleep and wake up tired like she had in those days spent recovering and moving with the camp. Here, in the Way-Station, the worst of injuries left her asleep in trophy-form for a while and she always woke up refreshed.

Even if she woke up to a roar of an angry master-warlock shaking the mansion.

"LIIIIIIINK!"

Robin smiled. Link had better hide – he was definitely in for it. She liked the idea of her dear daughter defending him – something he'd never had the luxury of before, or of that black-winged boy spoiling for another fight.

The former battle-tactician stepped out into the hall only to have the erstwhile hero grab her by the shoulders and hide behind her in the manner of a craven rabbit she once knew named Yarne.

"Link!" she protested, "What are you doing?"

"You've gotta hide me! Or let me borrow your big coat so I can hide in it or something!" Link yelped, uncharacteristic of his general trait of courage. "Come up with a strategy for me! Do something!"

"Link, you know that when you taunt Ganondorf in trophy-form that he is going to lash out. You've faced him in how many lifetimes now? This really unbecomes you."

"Okay, so I just met Lucina and I want to make sure she's going to be okay around here – and then those two winged children… I have things to do and can't spend a week or even a day stiff and still!"

"That's very sweet," Robin sighed, "but there are some battles that are yours, mighty Hero."

"Stop smirking!"

Robin's eyes went wide as she saw a mighty creature enter the hallway, breathing and puffing warm steam. "I didn't think he'd be able to get a Smash Ball outside of a stage…"

Ganon – that is, Ganondorf in is full boar-form was running right toward them with a bit of "sausage-Link" the only thing on his mind. Lucina – like lightning, jumped out of a doorway, Falchion held in a defensive stance with Toon Link at her side.

"Hope will never die!" Lucina shouted.

"Not today!" Toon Link chimed in. "Remember what I did to you in another life! I can do it again!"

Robin was amused. Her daughter looked so small against the beast, but was bristling with bravery. She had faced down Grima, after all. Link stood beside her, dumbfounded. Toon Link raised his version of the Master Sword and gave a battle-cry.

"Calm down!" came a booming voice as a spectral giant hand came hovering through the opposite part of the corridor, from behind Robin and Link. To the amazement of Lucina, the great beast she faced down sat upon his haunches and regarded the white glove like a naughty dog that had been caught by its master. The boar remained this way for a moment before magical energies swirled around it and it became the large, but small in comparison form of Ganondorf, who stood respectfully.

"The fighting outside the stages was unfortunate," Master Hand intoned, "But you did not suffer much damage. I assure you that Link will face a penalty appropriate to his crime under MY law."

"Hmmfph," Ganondorf groused.

"Go clean yourself up and enjoy the garden for a while. My place is a place of order, not of vigilantism."

Ganondorf, recognizing a superior force that he hadn't been able to use subterfuge on yet, wandered back down the hall to take care of his post-trophy-recovery. Link took off his hat and snickered into it as soon as the larger man was out of earshot. There were a few of the markings that Dark Pit had made still present upon the wizard's person and they would take a lot of soap to get off.

"Robin," the floating hand intoned, "It is good to see you awake and well. I have a special fight planned for you today."

"A special fight?" the silver-haired woman asked, "I was just in one of the arenas yesterday, hence my recent condition."

Lucina sheathed her version of Falchion and stood up, patting Toon Link on the head, much to the latter's annoyance. Large-Link scratched his right ear after replacing his hat and stood his ground before the Hand.

"She took a 'fatal.' Shouldn't that earn her a day of rest and a day with her family?"

"Oh, this is very special, Robin," the Hand said. "It's just one of the Omega-stages and your only opponent shall be Rob – by which I mean your counterpart, not the robot. We are testing the new Final Smash for either of you."

Robin sank into her coat, pulling her hood up. "If it's all the same, sir, I am personally fine with having no Final Smash. I am sure that Rob feels the same way."

"Oh, I think that this one should not cause you any distress," Master Hand soothed. "It may… we haven't tested it out yet, but I suspect it will make one or both of you quite happy."

"Alright, then," Robin said, flicking her hood back down. "Let's get it over with."

* * *

The spectator area for the Smashers was packed as was the area for the city denizens. This was supposed to be "only a test," but had been opened by both Master and Crazy Hand for public viewing. The Robin-twins looked distinctly uncomfortable as they both landed upon the vanilla version of the Battlefield. It wasn't every day that people got to see a brand new Final Smash come forth. It seemed like the air itself was electrified and everyone sat on the edges of their seats waiting to see either Robin or Rob get the Smash Ball that eventually would bounce into view.

There were rumors that the new attack would carry differences for either of them.

"They'd better not be stringing Mother along," Lucina huffed, sitting next to Link. "She's suffered enough!"

"Master Hand knows my feelings – and he knows the feelings of all his 'gladiators' on this by now. If he pulls something like the Grima-summon move, it won't just be me cutting into his business and his fingers."

"Good to know," Lucina said. She idly stroked Pikachu, who'd come up to become her little lap-pet for the time being, alternately resting upon her knees and upon the otherwise empty seat next to her.

Before any Smash Ball appeared, the contestants were summoned onto the stage and just stood for several moments. There was some grousing and some throwing down of popcorn. Donkey Kong slapped the ground before him with one hand in frustration while his little buddy, Diddy, danced about on his back attempting to dispel annoyance.

"What's happening?" Lucina asked.

"Oh, when it's just those two and sometimes with that Shulk-fellow I've seen around, or the little astronaut against either of them, they tend to get stuck like this for a little bit. You should recognize it."

"They are sizing each other up," Lucina said, the realization dawning on her. It seemed to be an instinctual behavior of her mother's to get a good read on an enemy before simply charging in. Typically, the enemies made that decision for her.

"Usually, we all just go forth!" Link said, "But when you've got a couple of strategy-heavy types, it can take almost a minute to get a match going."

Despite the sweat-thick tension in the air, it took only about thirty seconds before both the male and the female Robin were upon each other. They brought out their Levin swords first, raining an electric-clash against each other that shook the stage and ended with them mutually jumping back. Robin charged up an Arcthunder while Rob tried to roast her where she stood with an Arcfire. The entire arena of spectators, both Smashers and citizens hooted and hollered in both anticipation and fulfillment watching the two spellcasters duke it out. Both were landing some hits on each other and both where hungry to win.

"I should expect Mother's competitive nature to transfer to Rob, shouldn't I?" Lucina muttered.

"Why would you expect any less?"

"Well, Toony is a lot like you – like a kid-version of you… though a bit louder."

"Different dimensions don't always equate to different personalities," Link finished, "Let's just hope they don't stalemate. We'll be here forever."

The object of coveting appeared upon the horizon, dropping down from the sky. The two Robins went after it as if it was a juicy piece of steak and they were week-starved beasts. Potential psychological-scarring be damned, they were in a fight!

Rob hit the thing several times with his bronze sword and a few unleashes of Thunder. Robin braced herself, ran right toward him and used the poor man as a jumping platform to take the final break with a quick double-jump and her own bronze sword. Rob stood shocked-still as he watched the woman develop a multicolored glow around her and saw her eyes submit to this incandescence. When he saw the energies swirl from the broken Smash Ball, his jaw hung, as did hers.

"Chrom?" Robin asked, but it came out as "CHROM!"

She braced her electric-themed spellbook against her chest and pointed. By reflex, she caught Rob in a static haze and Chrom, though he had a bewildered look on his face, grabbed Falchion and laid into the hapless warrior as if Rob had been Gangrel, himself.

Rob was rocketed off the stage and hit the interior force-field in a face-planting splat. He disappeared into the void below to be taken care of by various workforce Miis and staff. Normally, the fight would continue until the numbers had taken sufficient hits and he would just be summoned back, but since this was a test that had essentially been set up as a contest to see who would get the Smash Ball first, the fight had been decided.

Lucina stood up as she looked down into the stage area. "F-Father?" she asked helplessly.

Upon the stage itself, Robin faced the newcomer as the glow faded off of him. He stood, stoic and proud as he ever was, even as he issued a mighty "Huh?"

"Chrom?" Robin asked gently, approaching him.

"Robin?" Chrom asked in turn. "Have you returned? Where are we?"

The Exalt of Ylisse looked around himself. He assessed that he was on some sort of floating stage and beheld the sea of faces.

"We are not in the Arena Ferox," Robin explained. "I am… actually… at loss to explain where we are." She looked to the floor, her eyes growing sad. "I have missed you dearly, but it is so sad that you are here… so soon."

"Do not worry, Robin," the voice of Master Hand spoke. The Hand itself was absent from the arena, letting his voice issue orders over speakers, but the tactician recognized it. "Chrom is very much alive in the world you hail from. Let us just say that he is here on a temporary visit."

Before more was said, Chrom rushed to her and grabbed her up in a tight embrace. He touched her hands, shoulders and cheeks. He nuzzled and kissed her neck – as if he was frantic to make sure that she was sufficiently real. Robin indulged him, allowing him to carry her and to spin her around. She ran her fingers through his hair and oh! He smelled so right!

* * *

"So, I'm taking a nap somewhere," Chrom semi-complained. "I guess I really am a lay-about."

"No," Master Hand said, floating behind him and the Lady Robin. Of course this had to be a dream with such a creature in it – not to mention happy-go-lucky-lizard in running gear, the marshmallow creatures, the porcelain-skinned people, the flat-man and the gorilla in the room, that is, the last room they'd been in and were exiting for quieter confines.

"I think he means that every time you sleep and get really deep into dream, you can visit me," Robin said, all smiles. "At least until I can return properly."

"But will I remember the dreams?" Chrom asked.

"I do not know," Master Hand confessed. "They may help to heal you either way. I can sense that your heart has been much troubled."

"Of course it's been!" Chrom growled. "I've been waiting on a hope and a promise every day that seems like a long wait for convoy that never comes! I… won the war, but I feel like I've lost my peace…"

"Chrom…" Robin said, hugging him. "Just enjoy it while it lasts, okay? I'll get the Smash Ball as often as possible – because I want to see your face."

"It is actually fortuitous that you cracked the Smash Ball at this time, Robin," the Hand said. "Chrom here has been in an especially deep sleep, creating a perfect window."

"Did Vaike and Gregor drink me under the table again?" the Newly Exalted idly wondered.

"No," the inscrutable white glove answered, "I am afraid that an assassin slipped your kingsguard and you were wounded. There was nothing crippling, but you took enough of an injury that your healers have had you asleep for the better part of two days just to keep you from moving around. Your Sir Frederick is beside himself and at your bedside. Your little daughter rests easily as does your younger sister. Worry not. You shall awaken soon, and quite well. Now, if Robin's counterpart had gotten the Smash Ball, I would have found myself bringing a far less healthy version of you here…It would have been far more work to summon him and the spirit may not have liked it."

"Counterpart?" Chrom asked.

At that moment, Robin and Chrom came up beside Rob, who was sitting on the cushioned end of a windowsill-turned couch. Chrom stared at him. There was a silver-haired man before that looked, for all intents and purposes, like a male-version of his wife, if such a thing were possible. To boot, he was casually munching on a fruit that Chrom was sure was a firefruit – something that he thought only Taguel could stand eating.

"Hey there, Chrom, old buddy, old pal," the mystery-man said while raising one hand.

"He's mine, Rob," Robin corrected him, clinging to Chrom in what could only be described as a girlish manner.

"Oh, I knew," Rob said between chews. "Still a chance to mend fences, for what it's worth."

Rob stood up and offered his hand for a shake. "Rob Grimm – Outrealmer to you – indeed another world's version of your wife. Have no worries, friend, as I like my mates female and fluffy. I consider your Robin to be like my sister, but you were my best friend in another life."

"Much… obliged…" Chrom said confusedly as he shook the man's free hand. "So… you… fought with another world's version of me, huh? Will I meet myself around here?"

"Not likely," Rob said. "This is a special place for certain dead people, not a true residence. My version of you probably moved on somewhere – somewhere nice I hope."

"And you?"

"Just another casualty of war, sir."

"Don't press him," Robin whispered, "He's just a little mad, the poor guy."

"And you, come back. You don't belong here, you belong with us," Chrom said to her as he watched Rob walk back down the hallway, off to some unknown place with a slight spring in his step. This dream was interesting if nothing else. He felt a pang of jealousy in not getting to have such an eccentric bro-buddy like some other version of him had apparently been treated to, but Chrom considered himself luckier. He'd gotten to marry his best friend.

"I am doing what I can to find my way home," the woman answered.

"Father!"

"Huh?"

Chrom turned and was nearly barreled into the ground by the young adult version of his daughter. Robin stepped back and noticed that Link had come with her and was keeping his distance.

"Lucina?" Chrom asked, choking out the words as the woman with hair a few touches darker than blueberry Kool-Aid nearly cut off his air supply.

They separated from each other for a moment. "What? What are you doing here?" they said at once, tripping over each others' words and finishing each others' sentence-fragments.

"I am dreaming, apparently!" Chrom said. "The floating glove said that I could visit Robin whenever she got the Smash Ball in a fight – whatever that's supposed to mean!"

"Link told me I was dead!"

"Hey, hey, whoa!" the Hylian said, holding up both his hands, palms out. "I was just telling the truth for how things usually go around here! I have no jurisdiction if the local deities want to make weird exceptions for family reunions!"

Chrom sighed. "The last time I saw you, you were saying goodbye," he said sadly, looking into his daughter's eyes. "You were worried about what your continuing presence in the life of the baby would do. I begged you to stay – Morgan did, too. We thought we could work things out with you being an aunt and him being an uncle by-honor. There no way we couldn't have worked things out, but you said that you needed some time alone to think and travel, so we gave you your space. You left Ylisstol not long ago."

"I remember that," Lucina said. "And I wandered for a bit. I found a few friendly towns to stay in. It was like my time spent searching for you only I wasn't chasing you down anymore and knew you were going to be okay. Mother didn't return. I recall coming across a little cheese-making village beset by bandits… but… that is all I remember. I woke up here and attacked Link."

"Hey, I had all honorable intentions, sir!" Link said. "She woke up in one of our weapons storage-lockers and I was the first to find her. People tend to wake up here with a lot of confusion."

"Let's never mind why we are here and just enjoy it for a little while, hmm?" Robin said, leaning into Chrom's shoulder flirtatiously. "I've missed you and you've missed me. Even if this is just a dream, we can make it as real as we want it to be."

The young king responded by tasting his tactician's lips just once more.

* * *

Frederick had just given his ailing lord another blanket. It just wouldn't do for young Lissa to come in for a medical check and see certain things, despite her knowledge of and general comfort around all of the workings of the human body. He wondered just how close she should be working with her brother, given the emotional attachment involved. Someone like Brady or Anna didn't mind at all giving him a good needle-stick or a stitch if he needed it, without apology.

Of course, Lord Chrom must have been having a really great dream if what the need for the extra blanket told Frederick was true. At least he always awakened from those kinds of dreams refreshed.

Instead, Chrom awoke with a start. He snorted and sniffed, his eyes panning wide before they were ready for the light. It was a gray day, but the light coming in from the windows was still quite a lot for a long sleeper. Blinking was rapid and furious.

"M'Lord, you are awake," Frederick greeted. "I shall prepare your favorite tea if you'd like. How are you feeling?"

"Lucina!"

"The darling angel is asleep in her nursery, being watched over by Lissa and the maid," Frederick informed."

"No… not the baby… I know that the baby is okay…" Chrom said, sitting up slowly and scratching at the bandages wrapped around his shoulder.

"You were out for two days, M'lord. It would be wise to take it easy."

"Lucina… the elder… she left, didn't she? She really left…"

"Yes," Frederick said. "She has been gone not yet for a fortnight. One should not expect her to return so soon, even though she did promise young Master Morgan that she'd come by every once in a while."

"Morgan… is he okay?"

"He is reading in Lady Robin's study, M'lord, as is usual for him. Are you quite alright, my liege? You are acting most unusual, even for one newly awakened from a wound-sleep."

"Yeah… I'll be alright," Chrom said. "I just had… a very vivid dream, is all."

He looked up to his butler and lieutenant, a hopeful, yet sad mask crossing his features. "There has been no news on Robin since I have been snoozing, has there?"

"No," Frederick said with a gentle shake of his head. "Although the statue in the square is nearing completion. All it needs now is a final polish."

Chrom smiled in spite of himself. There had to be torrents of water pouring off that thing, given the state of the sky outside. Robin would probably give him a light taste of Thunder through his bones for such an extravagance, but it had made him - and most Ylisstol – feel a little better. It was just another way of grieving and coming to terms with events. A bronze of a war-hero for the square was a standard issue, even if that hero had also been the nation's queen. Lucina –the adult, of course – had done body-posing for the main part of it, due to having a similar build. She wore Morgan's coat and posed with a denatured tome and let artist after artist sketch her trying to look fierce and intelligent. The head and face were gleaned from some of Libra's drawings and everyone's fond memories. Morgan nitpicked it like crazy. It was close to perfect now and Chrom both anticipated and feared the day when his wife might actually see it.

That is, if their bonds were strong enough to bring her back.

Chrom carefully got out of bed and staggered to the window. He could just make out the square from here, the statue very distant and shrouded in rain-mist. He saw a wagon drawn by two mules enter the street and move past it into the way of the one of the palace supply-roads. Their hooves splish-slashed in the rain puddles as the wagon wheels parted rivers. It was the only thing on the path and Chrom felt particularly uneasy about it.

It appeared to be an ice-wagon. He had not recalled ordering any ice for the food stores lately. It also seemed like the kind of thing that would be unwieldy in this weather.

A deep sinking feeling settled into his gut. He could have still been awakening from his dream about a far-off Land of the Dead where his wife awaited her phoenix-rise and his daughter was inexplicably present, but he felt like no good news would come from that wagon. He stared at it until it disappeared behind one of the interior walls that he could not see well from his bedroom's angle.

He heard Fredrick behind him issuing a grunt and the gentle clink of cups on a tea-service. "M'lord," he said "Something hot to drink to steady your nerves?"

* * *

 _I am really laying into poor Rob here, aren't I? Don't read anything into it. I just need to give the guy a happy-chapter. I do like the male Robin quite a lot – in fact, I've been dabbling at a fourth playthrough of Awakening (second "thorough" type on my own cartridge) using, for fun, a pure-default appearance / stats male Robin (married to Lucina this time, rather than Panne and with a special birthday) – Or at least I was doing this before I got sick. I tried playing "Flames on the Blue" with flames in my body and I was pretty sure I was on my female-avatar file messing around hoping that one of my nurses DIDN'T overhear Henry shouting "Yay! Blood!" when I had the sound on at one point._

 _For fans of the other fandoms detailed in this, I'm sorry for being so Fire Emblem: Awakening heavy for a while here. It needs to get written through. Considering some of the role-playing of story-ideas I've done with Blender, if I am able to keep my writing this, you'll be in for an entire chapter of angel-brothers getting stuck in weird places and having hilarious arguments in the future as well as Hylian reincarnation-angst._


	7. Bless the Beasts and Children

_**Notes:**_ _Sorry to keep people waiting. I've been distracted by a lot of things lately – original writing ideas, houseguests, illness… Fire Emblem: Fates…_

* * *

 **TALES OF THE WAY-STATION**

 **7: Bless the Beasts and Children**

"Pittooo!" Pit whined, "Just come see a match with me today! I can't even believe you! You come to a place that has your favorite thing in the world – fighting, and you can't even let yourself enjoy it!"

"That's because your idiot goddess keeps insisting that we're dead!" Dark Pit shot back. "It's distracting! I do like fighting, but I like it on MY terms! This place, whatever it is – is NOT on my terms!"

"As long as we're in a place outside of time, we might as well have fun!" Pit insisted. "Lady Palutena says what we can come back but… what did you say about that again?"

"Only if you want to be cute little _putti_ ," the goddess said with a smile.

"Huh?"

"You know… those little baby angels you see in art. That's what your new bodies will be like until you grow up. Oh, I've missed having babies around the temple! I think I can work it out so that you both will have all of your memories, but you'll be all tiny and chubby and cute for a good long time!"

Pit made a face. "I don't want to wear diapers again."

"Again?" Dark Pit groused. "I've never worn diapers and don't want to – ever!"

Palutena laughed. "Then try to enjoy yourselves here until you are ready to go home."

"What about the humans, Lady Palutena?" Pit asked earnestly. "Is our world okay?"

"The battle was won," Palutena sighed, though I cannot tolerate the cost. This is why I am staying with you for as long as it takes for you to accept what has happened."

"There's nothing to accept," Dark Pit said with an angry shrug. "I don't know what kind of trick you're playing on us, but we're not dead!"

"You said I was here before, Lady Palutena?" Pit inquired.

"Briefly. I'm surprised you don't remember it. Your body was badly damaged in the Orcos War and I sent your soul here for a little while. It probably felt like a dream to you, but you did end up helping the spirits here stave off an invasion from a cosmic entity that tried to enslave this place."

"Well, I'm glad you didn't have to bring me back in diapers."

"You were hurt enough that you had to be in a coma for a little while, but not enough to… to…"

"Are you crying, Lady Palutena?"

"Knock it off!" Dark Pit groused. "She's just messing with us, Pit, like she always does. Now, what is it you were trying to tell me about fights? I suppose I'll go watch one or two with you. This isn't convincing as a 'land of the dead' or whatever, but if I can watch some idiots beat the stuffing out of each other, maybe I'll get a laugh out of it."

"That's the spirit, Pittoo! Come on! I heard that Mario-guy is taking on that flat-dude and the fox-man on the weird little planet stage! Oh! Oh, and that electric mouse! He's supposed to be there, too! What was his name again, Pokeman?"

"Pikachu," Palutena corrected. "And, indeed, he is a Pokemon – it's a class of creatures that he belongs to. I hear that they make great pets and are highly collectable. I'll get us some popcorn."

As the twin angels walked from what had been assigned to them as their quarters with the goddess into the main hall, they witnessed one of the Smash fighters being accosted by a desperate-looking man.

Pit pointed. "Hey, isn't that the guy who showed up in Robin's Smash Ball last week?"

* * *

The blue-haired and regal-looking man was shaking Rob by the shoulders. "Lucina!" he yelped. "You've got to tell me where she is right now! I can't wait! I have to see her right away!"

"Calm down, Chrom," Rob intoned, trying to gently pry Chrom off his person. "It is a rather strange development that I would call you up in a battle instead of your Robin. Would you like to see her? I mean… I am thankful for your assistance, but the fact that you're not of my world does make this all rather awkward…"

"Yes," Chrom sighed, "I would like to see my wife, but the matter of my daughter is much more urgent."

"You look like you've seen something horrible. Please, be at ease. Lucina is quite well here. She is probably in the Cat Room again."

"Cat…Room?"

Rob gently led Chrom toward a hall leading to one of the quieter areas of the Smash-complex. "Yes, the Cat Room," the tactician explained. "We also have a Dog Room. They serve one of our more unusual stages. Puppies and kittens are kept here as part of the stage décor for the enjoyment of the spectators. They're a bit different from some of our animal-fighters. They also make a fine distraction-challenge for their themed-stage. We speculate that the animals are the souls of dogs and cats that died as strays. They're also sort of a morale-boost, stress-relief for those of us who like playing with small animals."

"Does Lucina go to these rooms often?" Chrom asked. His toddler back home enjoyed the palace hunting-dogs and Pegasi and horses in the stables, but he'd never seen his future-daughter cozy up to anything other than the war-equines kept in-camp. She rode a Pegasus for a while to train in new skills but he'd never seen her trying to cuddle up with any of Henry's black cat friends or anything of that nature. There was Yarne, though – the memory of whom made Chrom grit his teeth. The man-rabbit had gotten a little too "cuddly" with his daughter at times for his liking in ways that she seemed oblivions to the true motives of.

"Link takes her there pretty often," Rob said brightly, "when she's not getting to know your mutual ancestor, Marth. You know Link - the man who wields the arming sword with the pointy ears. You wouldn't guess it by looking at him, but he has quite a thing for cats – animals in general, actually, but the two of them really seem to like going to the Cat Room together."

"I really have to see her, Rob."

What the mage said next froze Chrom's blood.

"You found her body in your world, didn't you?" he sighed.

Rob opened the door unto a large room filled with giant blocks and plush toys. There were couches along the walls and everything looked like it was set up almost like a café. There was a shelf holding all kinds of wands and a huge basket with balls of wooly yarn.

Link was standing in the center of the room holding a calico kitten to his chest. Lucina was sitting on one of the couches waving a wand with a string and a feather-toy to entice a tiny black-and-white-patched cat. Link looked up at the entrants and his hat wriggled. A small black cat peered out from a perch upon his head, nestled in the hat.

Rob smirked. Lucina laughed in a way that was rare for her. Chrom immediately bolted to the couch and wrapped his arms around her.

"Lucina!"

"Father?"

"Oh, Lucina…"

"He came up when I got the Smash Ball in my last match," Rob explained. "I think I'll go try to find my counterpart now. I think she went into the city for some light shopping and should be getting back soon."

Chrom barely noticed when the man gently shut the door behind him. All Link could do was stand and watch in silence as he took the hat off his head and held it with a kitten still inside it.

"Father, what is wrong?" Lucina asked. "You haven't hugged me this tight since… since just after the battle with Grima."

Chrom composed himself and found himself sitting on the couch beside her. "I'm just glad to see that you're… okay… in a manner of speaking. I don't care if this is just a dream…"

"Father, what are you talking about?"

"You came home, Lucina," Chrom said slowly. "A… a wagon came… to the castle. It was Sully and Stahl that found you. They were patrolling in the south part of the kingdom and came upon a village you defended. You saved the people there from a gang of murderous bandits – took out every one of them… but you took a blow from the leader's sword." Chrom began choking up. "A-according to the report I was given, the village cleric tried to heal you, but you… you died there. They built you a coffin, the local 'simple kid' picked you some flowers and instead of shutting your eyes they… they… bound a cloth around them so that we could see your brand when we took it off."

Lucina looked suddenly stricken. She touched her side.

"Are you okay?" Link asked. "If you're in pain…"

"A little," Lucina answered.

Link went to his knees before her and set the cat in his hat upon her lap. She gently and methodically stroked the animal while Link rubbed her shoulder, trying to be of some comfort. A tear fell from her eye. "I guess… I guess it's real, then… I'm really dead."

"The residual pain should stop hurting once you stop thinking about it," Link instructed. "Trust me; I've been through it many times."

"How is… everyone?" Lucina asked.

"I gave the Parallel Falchion to Morgan," Chrom said. "You know, the real one, the physical one. He immediately used it to cut down all of the new apple-tree saplings we had planted in the West Garden. He's taken to renaming it the 'Worthless Fruit Knife."

"Oh, no… Though it does confirm my suspicion – that he can wield it."

"He's sort of become a 'second-Papa' to Little Lucina," Chrom said with a rueful smile. "He watches her like a hawk."

"I am so sorry, Father."

"There is nothing to be sorry over – and upon your killer you avenged yourself. There's really nothing more to be done. I just… had to see you as soon as I woke up in this world."

"This is a place of rest, sir," Link butt in. "You have nothing to worry about in regards to her being here. She's an amazing fighter, too. She's only lost a single match she's been in and she fights almost every day."

"Gotta keep my war-skills sharp in case I reincarnate, right?" Lucina said with a tearful smile. "That Princess Peach isn't the pushover that she looks to be."

"She put you to sleep with that Final Smash song she has and hit you with a frying pan. I hardly call that fair," Link grumbled.

"Dealing with dirty fighting is like dealing with the Risen… also bandits. Maybe I won't be taken out so easily in my next life."

Suddenly the door opened. "Found her!" Rob chimed, letting Robin in. The latter's arms were laden with shopping bags.

"Mother!"

"Chrom?"

"A cat in a hat?" Link offered, proffering the kitten.

"I made a bit of extra gold and rupees running some betting pools," Robin said, "I wanted some tea and light Outrealm fiction."

"Oh, you know you slipped out to avoid me tagging along and picking out dresses!" Lucina groused.

"Another time. Chrom, what are you doing here?"

"Smash Ball!" Rob said before departing again.

"Why does everyone look like they've been crying?"

* * *

"So I see," Robin said gently as she and Chrom sat alone together in her private quarters. "You probably should have told her more about the state you found her in. Now that she is more accepting of her death, the nightmares will probably begin."

"I am tired of the losses," Chrom said gravely, shaking his head.

"Master Hand has done a wonderful thing by allowing you to come here when you sleep," Robin said with a smile, holding both of his hands in hers.

"I can't bring any of the others with me," Chrom said. "That is the problem. I can't bring Morgan here. He's a mess, Robin. Between losing you – again – and losing his sister. You two are the only people he even remembers!"

They paused for a moment before Chrom began again. "You…you at least… you need to come home, Robin."

"Chrom? Remember what Naga said… we don't even know if I can."

"Of course you can. I believe that you can."

"I want to, Chrom, with all of my heart, but I'm not sure I have any control over the situation." Robin sighed deeply. "But… doesn't everyone feel safer with me gone?"

"What are you even talking about, Robin?"

Robin turned her face away. "I'm a Fellblood," she said. "I was the human embodiment of Grima."

"But you rejected that destiny!" Chrom quailed, "You DIED to defy it!"

"Yes, I know, Chrom, but I can't help but think that maybe all of our friends might feel a little safer if I remain… as I am."

"They want you back, Robin! Everyone does! Remember what Tiki said during the last battle! You are not Grima and Grima is not you! You are Robin! You will always be Robin…Robin the Human. We all know this!"

Chrom stood up and paced. "Is this why you haven't come home yet?" he asked both himself and his wife. "Everyone has been waiting month after year! We still send out search parties on a monthly basis! That's… that's how Lucina was found… Don't tell me that a problem with our bonds… is on your end…"

Robin glanced at her folded hands in her lap.

"You have to feel like you're worthy, Robin. You have two children who need you…and on yet to be born. And… I need you. I need you like air!"

Robin looked up with a small smile. "Chrom… you've always been… so cheesy."

"I'm fading…" Chrom said. "I must be waking up. I don't want to, but… someone needs to wait for you on the other side."

"Chrom…"

* * *

Night in the Smash Mansion was filled with dreams of dying. Link tossed and turned in his sleep, feeling himself coughing with a sickness he no longer had. A little blond boy had the dream about drowning again. A dog bayed to the distant stars upon his outdoor blanket, his dream filled with similar things while his duck-friend flew on forever.

One former plumber's dream was filled with fire dressed up in long bars and in magma flowing below his feet. Another's was haunted by toothy apparitions and the snapping jaws of carnivorous plants.

Clipped aircraft wings and the vacuum of space greeted some. Falling into the fabled third-dimension greeted one dreamer. Creatures small and great were either spent in battle or rested upon the laps of beloved trainers, stroking their fur for the very last time.

One young man heeded the errie song that played in the air of a town called 'Lavender' – again and again.

Some members of the fighting-roster had much more pleasant dreams of great feasts of fame as the creators thereof.

An old warlord stood still and stoic, contemplating the blade in his chest once more and coming up with ideas to destroy the two responsible for putting it there in his next life.

A wild ape did his best to outrun hunters.

Two fighters faced the red-eyed skull of a dragon.

One young sword-wielder felt the bite of a sword through her kidney and liver and woke up screaming as the dawn filtered in through her window. One of those awakened from dragon-dreams was quick to hold her in their shared quarters and to tell her that the "dreams dull with time."

A black-winged angel held one with white wings be-spotted with red and kept begging for him to wake up. The white-winged angel begged for "five more minutes" as the one with raven-wings curled up in bed beside him, unaware of his actions due to sleepwalking.

And so the Way-Station of Warrior Souls spent another day and another night in their little time-between-times.


	8. Tactless

_Apologies for the last chapter being such a "filler-chapter." I needed to get through a few things in the story and didn't think I had room to introduce any of the truly exciting or funny ideas. My multi-chaptered pieces inevitably wind up with a chapter or two that are more expository than fun like that. Also apologies for taking a long time… I've been really into playing Hyrule Warriors: Legends lately._

* * *

 **TALES OF THE WAY-STATION**

 **8: Tactless**

"So, Link…" Princess Zelda said in a scolding tone, "THIS is why you took so long to rescue the Sages?"

"You should know, you were there, SHEIK."

"I didn't follow you around all the time, you know. I had my own ninja-missions, mainly having to do with keeping the monsters at your tail from making you into mincemeat."

"That was another lifetime ago!"

"Tell me… how much time did you spend in your last lifetime fishing? Was it as much as it was in this quest-record?"

Link rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "MORE, I'd say? Look, when the gods want a simple country-boy to save the world, he's gotta do something to take off the stress. Also, a boy's gotta eat, right? Fish is delicious."

"This game doesn't let you eat them! Okay… and teasing innocent cucoos… hide and seek games to get a bottle…"

"I needed that bottle!"

"Link, I'm teasing you," the princess said with a smile. "I am… really glad that I have been given a window to see a few of your quests from your perspective. It's quite enlightening." She turned to another person who was sitting in the garden with them. "Thank you, Goddess Palutena, for giving us these wonderful little devices."

"Oh, no problem!" Palutena replied. "I honestly did not know if I should break the Fourth Wall, but Master Hand gave me the go-ahead. After all, this isn't going to mess up things in your respective worlds, will it? I expect any of you that reincarnate are going to lose your memories of this place. That's how it usually happens in my world."

"I'm slated to have a full-on resurrection… if I return," Robin said, holding a purple 3DS in front of her, pawing through one of Lady Palutena's save-files "but I am an expert at losing my memory. Ha! Your green-haired version of me married Libra!"

"Well, he is a priest and I'm a goddess," Palutena said brightly. "It made sense."

The Goddess of Light had seen fit to enlighten and entertain a few of her new friends by giving them gifts of the gaming devices that she and her angels enjoyed playing in their off-time and allowing them to see their worlds in the form of games. She informed them that in her world and in many other worlds, that their lifetimes were tales for other people. Instead of being shocked, appalled and dismayed by this, most of the Smash-world fighters seemed to be amused and delighted.

"Give me your world's game again," Robin said. "I enjoy slipping out of tactician-mode to play to Pit's simple bravado and ignorance."

"Don't let him hear you say that."

"Good thing he finally convinced Dark Pit to join in a few matches with him. They both seem to really like the fighting."

"My last lifetime is on a console, right" Link asked. "The Ocarina of Time was something I used a few lifetimes ago. I mean, I remember it all now, here, but, I don't feel as close a connection."

"That's because there aren't as many kinds of fish for you to catch here!" Zelda said sarcastically as she poured over her sparkly little pink 3DS where she'd parked a past version of Link at the Lake Hylia fishing hole. Link sat next to her. He looked up from his green-cased device where he was busily subjecting his good old buddy Mario to many, many accidental deaths because he found that he just wasn't very good at platform-games.

Meanwhile, Ness and Lucas ran past the seated gamers on a mission. They'd each been given cell phones and seemed, strangely enough more interested in the time being in catching fake Pokemon rather than in playing with the real ones they shared their home with. Pikachu ran up behind them, confused when they pointed to the bushes since he didn't see anything he was supposed to fight for his adopted masters.

"Pika?"

"Oh, don't worry, Pikachu," Palutena said, scooping the small creature up in her arms. "Let them have their fun and they'll come back to you."

"Where's Lucina off to?" Link asked Robin. "She might like this. I know she's serious most of the time, but I think controlling 'me' for a little bit might make her smile."

"With Marth," Robin answered. "They're actually breaking the language-barrier a little bit as they compare sword-techniques. They're having good ancestor-descendant time."

The be-cloaked woman poured over her stylus-work controlling the flight of an angel and suddenly went pale as she watched a cutscene.

"Is something the matter?" Palutena asked.

"You said this game is a true record, correct?"

"Yes," Palutena softly laughed. "Maybe a few things were embellished in post, but yes, Pit really is that much of a dork. You've met him."

Robin looked up cautiously. "I just finished Chapter 21."

At that moment, Pit and Dark Pit walked into the garden. They were arguing loudly about the closeness of their latest fighting match.

"Admit that I kicked your butt into next week!" Dark Pit complained.

"It was so close! You cheated! That was a dirty move!"

"Then why did Master Hand allow it, huh? Just admit that I rule and you drool."

"Oh, Lady Palutena!" Pit said, taking a knee. Dark Pit rolled his eyes.

"Heh, heh, how was the match?" Palutena asked.

"Awesome!" Pit answered, "Or it would have been if Pittoo wasn't a dirty fighter!"

"Hey!" Dark Pit called, "Hoodie-Woman, what's wrong with you?"

Robin gently set her 3DS and stylus down on the concrete edge of the planting bed she was sitting on. "Nothing, nothing really."

"Oh!" Pit said, "You gave them games, Lady Palutena! Is everyone playing with themselves?"

Zelda's face immediately went tomato-red and she hid her eyes with her palm. Link snorted. Robin laughed and slapped her knee.

"Wait? What did I say?" Pit choked.

"I was…" Link snorted, "Playing" he snorted again, "with myself… um… earlier. Right now I'm having fun with Mario." Link squint his eyes against the sun and bit his lip. "I'm… I'm so sorry, Pit… It just sounds so wrong!"

"Your wings," Robin said; eyeing the white appendages mounted on Pit's back.

"What about them?" the angel wondered, twitching them.

"I was playing your game and… I witnessed your sacrifice."

"Oh, that!" Pit said. "Play the next chapter! You get to play with Pittoo on that one! He got me my wings back!"

"Alright," the woman said with a sad smile. "It just… it looked so horrible, so painful."

"I'm okay now," Pit said brightly. "See? My wings are just fine."

"Even though everyone here says we're dead," his dark half grumbled.

* * *

Later that evening, Robin visited Palutena in the quarters that had been prepared for her and her boys. She'd brought a crystal Chess set to have a friendly game with the goddess. Robin marveled at the center room. It was done in marble pillars and sheer drapes giving the place an appearance both ancient and opulent.

"My universe is an ancient land," Palutena explained. "Some of the souls here from other eras claim it as 'Grecian.' You come from a world that's stuck in a sort of European Medieval-stasis."

"I am not sure I understand what you mean," Robin said, "but it is true that the people here have vastly differing cultures and technologies."

"I think I will adapt quite readily," Palutena bragged. "I am a goddess. As for you, did it take you a long time to adjust?"

"It took a little time," Robin confessed. "But most of what I had to get over was the whole being dead thing. I didn't exactly expect this kind of an afterlife, even one as a waiting-room."

The goddess offered the tactician some wine. Robin limited herself to a single glass and offered the goddess tea, for they were at a game and Robin "Never drank too much before a battle" saving that kind of thing for the victory celebration.

"You are as formidable as Zelda," Robin praised as she contemplated a move.

"Goddess of Wisdom," Palutena answered. "I am afraid that I will have to refuse your proposal out in the garden. I simply cannot part with my boys even if it were possible to have them reincarnated into your world. If it were, if I could loan you Pit, you'd have to ask Viridi about Pittoo's contract."

"Too bad," Robin said, putting a piece down with a hard, sharp click. "Winged archers would be quite an asset to any army."

"You do remember that they cannot fly except under godly power…"

Robin sighed. "You're right, I forgot about that. And making them Pegasus Knights would be a bit redundant with extra sets of wings flailing everywhere. Still, I like them. They are brave and they clearly care for each other very much."

"Don't let Pittoo hear you say that," Palutena cautioned with a smirk. "He doesn't like being thought of as soft."

"He doesn't realize how cute he is, does he? The round face… very boyish."

"Cute!" Palutena laughed. "Oh, he'd cut you to ribbons for that remark."

"A good tactician has nothing to fear."

Robin then sipped her mug of tea and ventured a question. "You… you pretty much watch them both from a mission control base, right?"

"With my all-seeing eye. The eye-surgery thing is just a joke."

"As I've gathered." Robin set her mug down. "How is it that they wound up here? I mean… As a goddess, you can travel through all realms, but you; yourself have said that both angels died. How does that work? I did not think such creatures were capable of mortality before seeing them here."

"Well," Palutena said, putting her index finger to her chin, "The gods of darkness were aspiring to take over the human world – my domain once again. I am certain that the God of Death, Thanatos, was getting help from Aries, the God of War, but I did not have sufficient proof to bring before the Pantheon so I was left to protect the human domain on my own… well, and with Viridi. She dislikes Humanity, but had her own interests in the Earth and its non-human creatures. I cannot abide murder for the sake of gaining souls as fuel and she cannot abide wanton wastefulness. I sent Pit to protect a town during the final battle. Here."

Palutena withdrew a map of Angel Land's surface-world, placed it on the table between them and pointed to a location on it. "I, meanwhile, was over here putting down the fresh form of a three-headed dragon and the budding, incoherent energies that were trying to form themselves back into Hades…"

The goddess explained the details of the battle to the fascinated tactician, their Chess game forgotten. "Pit communicates with me through that laurel-crown he wears. That way I can send him support in energy and in food. Angels have a surprisingly high metabolism."

"I've noticed that here," Robin said. "I had some big eaters in my army, but they just don't hold a candle to him or to that Kirby-fellow."

"I was sure the twins had things covered… the town was just about cleaned up of enemies, so I concentrated my attention on my task at hand. That is when Thanatos warped himself to their location… and…"

"You took your sight off of them."

"I knew their position and had faith in them."

"Did you sense something amiss during the fight?"

"Yes, I did. And Pit called for help, but I was unable to tear myself away from my own battle and had trust in Pittoo's support."

Robin contemplated the marks the goddess had made on her map and the details of the battle she had been given.

"You screwed up," she said bluntly.

"Come again?"

"Your enemy used a distraction-tactic on you. You were never the main target. You fell for it, took your eye off your men and they perished for it."

"I can't believe what you're saying! You dare question the judgment of a goddess?"

"That I do," Robin said, packing up her Chess board and pieces.

"You don't realize what you're saying!"

"Listen," Robin said with a glare, "You don't like hearing it, but those two angels died because you made a mistake. The fact that they are stuck here is on you. Face that fact and don't make the same kind of mistake again."

"Pit… Pittoo… I did not kill them!"

"The God of Death did, of course," Robin answered, "but they still suffered because you fell for a trick. Always keep tabs on your troops."

With that, Robin left the room. Lady Palutena wandered out to a hall that she thought was deserted. She went to her knees and sat down, staring at the wall opposite of her. She ran the last proceedings of the battle over and over again in her head. She and Viridi had won the fight. Her domain was safe for the time-being – enough for her to feel safe being in the Smash-realm, not that it would have mattered as time ran differently here and she could enter back into Skyworld at exactly the moment she'd left if she wanted to.

Scenarios danced in her memory – gods against gods. She remembered her last words to Pit with a wince. "Just take care of it!" she'd ordered, putting her faith in his extraordinary luck and determination. Her own energy was being drained by tentacled black shadows. She'd _needed_ Pit to "fly on his own" for just a few minutes. He wasn't even alone. Dark Pit had been there.

When she had overcome her end of it and was greeted with silence when she'd tried to raise Pit on communication, her powerful soul had clenched. She immediately transported herself to the twins' location and found their broken bodies. Pittoo was holding Pit in his arms, his wings flared out as a shield even as he was slumped over. They were dressed in black, white and crimson, their hair sticky and matted, their crowns crooked. Palutena knew at a glance which one of them had died first. Pit had fallen and Pittoo had been trying to protect him. She used her sense to feel for their souls nearby but detected nothing. That was when she'd heard the laughter of Thanatos and saw his ugly shadow approaching her.

There was no fury like that of the Light that day. Thanatos would take at least another century before he could scrap together even a skeleton of himself again.

The goddesses had sensed and felt traces left by soul-tails leading into Master Hand's domain. She thanked him as she stepped in.

And so, here she was, crying in a hallway wondering if only she had turned her attention to Pit for a moment that she might have saved him and Pittoo both.

It was the word of a goddess against a tactician regarding tactics and Palutena was certain now that the latter of them was right.

"Lady Palutena?"

The goddess looked up. Lucina had practically tripped over her.

"Oh, I am so sorry!" the princess of Ylisse apologized. "What is wrong? You seem most upset!"

"I was having a game-date with Robin," Palutena explained, getting up and dusting her dress off and wiping her eyes. "We began talking about the battle that brought my angels here. Your mother made me realize a hard truth."

"What did she say?" Lucina asked, her eyes narrowing.

"She pointed out to me some errors I made in the battle… And she told me that if I had been watching my troops more closely that my boys would not have been killed."

Lucina stormed down the hall. "MOTHER!" she yelled.

"Is it true, Lady Palutena?" Pit asked as he came cautiously out into the hall. The goddess sighed.

* * *

The entirety of the mansion was awakened by the sounds of crackling magic, thrown books and a sword hewing into bookshelves and tables.

"TACTLESS! I can't believe it! My mother – the Tactless Tactician!"

"I only told her the truth! I don't want her to make the same mistake again!"

"You told her she killed her children!"

"Graaaah!"

"What the?" Link asked himself as padded toward Robin's Roost in his sleeping-tunic and his long hat with the fuzzy ball in the end. It was a lot like the hat he usually wore; only it had a fuzzy ball on the end so he could identify it as his sleeping-cap. Rob came up rubbing his eyes in his silk pajamas. Other sleepy Smashers milled behind them as they stared through the open door.

"Wow, I've never seen her this angry before," Link said of Lucina. "It's pretty scary."

"Knowing that you cannot kill your opponent sure brings out the lethal force!" Rob observed. "Robin just tossed her fifth spent Thoron tome. Thoron's nothing to mess around with."

"Are you going to try to talk her down?" Link asked. "I want to get back to sleep."

Rob looked to him and to the room and back to Link again. "I think it is time for Brave Sir Robin to bravely run away," he said before walking back to his chamber with a yawn.

"Get back here! She's your twin!"

"And Lucina is your girlfriend. Don't give me that look. You get that lovesick puppy look whenever you're around her. They'll tire themselves out. Goodnight."

"APOLOGIZE!"

The screaming within the Roost continued. Toon Link looked at it from between his larger counterpart's legs.

Mario brushed past them. "Just a' stop it already! Some of us need sleep!"

The cover of an Arcfire smacked him in the nose.

"SHE IS A GODDESS! I EXPECT MORE FROM HER! My army…. They were mortals… and decisions I made… not all of us came back…"

Suddenly, everything got quiet.

"Mother, you can't keep beating yourself up for the past!"

Robin curled up in her desk chair and began weeping. "Palutena is a goddess… she can bring her people back. I don't want her to make the same mistake twice. I never got the chance… I could never bring anyone back."

"Mother…"

"Alright, everyone back to bed!" Master Hand announced, floating into the hall behind everyone. "I will take care of this."

"Lucina, you can come stay with me if you want," Link offered.

"It's alright, Link," the princess said. "I think Mother and I will be okay now."

"The place is a mess."

"So it is."

"Just like us," Robin hiccupped.

Dark Pit tapped his foot and crossed his arms as he glared at Palutena. "When you bring us back, I am not going to give you the chance to make another mistake," he said. "I am going to be free and on my own as soon as I can."

Pit looked back and forth between his brother and his goddess, torn.

* * *

 _ **To be continued… (When I feel like it).**_


	9. Akashic Records

_Thanks to ArkNorth for giving me the stupid idea upon which I start out this chapter._

* * *

 **TALES OF THE WAY-STATION**

 **9: Akashic Records**

Lucina's fingers clacked over a keyboard. She had an easier time with it than the touchpads that some of the other residents had been trying to show her. She'd wanted to learn a bit of the technology that was used in the Smash Mansion and was currently enlisting the aid of Samus Aran and Red the Pokemon Trainer. She wasn't yet used to the games that Lady Palutena was providing for everyone even though Link had taken to them like a duck to water and she was more interested in practical uses of screens and data.

"I'm afraid that I'm always going to be more comfortable with tomes," Lucina sighed.

"Oh, you'll get the hang of it," Samus encouraged as she watched Lucina type the sentence "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" over and over again to get her fingers used to the feel of a standard desktop computer typing pad. Apparently, even this was a bit archaic to the current level of technology that was standard to the grounds and was especially primitive to the spacefarer, Samus. The bounty hunter informed the princess of how the system she was on was "just a step up from typewriters."

"Computers were all over my world," Red said from the other side of the young woman's chair. "We integrated them with biology and used them to store Pokemon in virtual-world settings like the stages here. In fact, it was my job and the job of other trainers to collect Pokemon for data-gathering purposes – to learn more about them, you know!"

"So… your strange animals would live inside these things?" Lucina asked.

"Sort of," Red answered. "And not all of them are willing to be transposed into data. Pikachu – the one you know here – hates going into a pokeball or being in a computer like cats hate baths! I don't think Mewtwo has ever let himself be stored – and I recall him telling me that some of the 'gods' don't particularly like it and will only do it as a concession to the right trainer."

"Gods?"

"Legendary Pokemon," Red answered. "They are Pokemon that are tied to great powers in nature. I've seen Xearnas and Arceus hanging out in the fields and forests here – I think they can come to this world without dying, like Palutena and Rosalina. I haven't seen Yveltal, though…and I think I would, at least every once in a while."

"What kind of Pokemon is he?" Lucina asked.

"The Legendary Pokemon of Destruction and Death," Red said simply. "You'd think with this being a land of the dead that he'd raise his beak here every now and again, but I ain't seen 'im. He is… a giant flying creature that according to the old stories, is awakened by war and tends to get grumpy, kill entire nations and go back to sleep."

Lucina visibly shuddered.

"What's wrong, Luce?"

"N…nothing," she muttered.

"Hey, do you want to access the Smash database?" Samus suggested. "Just close up that type-training program and click this little icon here. All of our worlds have archives. They aren't complete… all of the oldest stuff is in the physical library, but if you want to learn about Pokemon, the Pokedex is in the computer-system."

"It's always being updated, though," Red informed. "New kinds are being discovered all the time all over the world I had to leave."

"Or," Samus said, "You could do what your mother and your 'uncle' do all the time on our computers…"

"What's that?"

"Battle simulations."

"They would," Lucina said with a smirk.

"Some of them are kind of ridiculous," Red added. "I mean, some are empire-builders, but there's one where you just sic red and blue guys with pitchforks and boxing gloves and stuff on each other. It's actually pretty fun to watch."

"Is there… information on all of us?" Lucina asked.

"Of course," Samus said, leaning over the desk. "Would you like to know everyone's birthdays?"

"Sure," Lucina said, sitting back in the office chair and letting Samus draw up a birthday-roster.

"We'll start with yours…" Samus muttered. "April 20th."

"Does anyone have their birthday soon?" Lucina asked.

"Should be coming up on someone's," Samus said, "but it's not like we do much celebrating of birthdays around here. It depends upon the person and those they are close to. The kids like birthday parties. Some of the more sober-minded adults actually celebrate their death-days."

"I wouldn't see that as a cause for celebration," Lucina said dourly.

Samus input a query for the current month. "Ah, there, Link has a birthday coming up!"

Lucina stared at the screen. Before her was an entire roster of, as best as she could guess, "Links." There were little square images of Link with slightly differing hairstyles and colors, but by the face, even with the youthful faces, the subject was clearly Link. Next to each picture was listed a different birthday.

Samus laughed. "Oh, would you look at that! I guess he's been reincarnated as himself so many times that he has multiple birthdays!"

Lucina scrolled down, down and down.

"Is it just me," she asked, "or is he making weird faces in every one of those images?"

Red stared incredulously. "It's like one of those quick-snap photo-booths…"

* * *

"What exactly happens when you reincarnate, Link?"

"Huh?" Link was taken aback by the question. He was sitting on a rock beside a deep woods fairy-spring that he'd taken Lucina out to see. This was one of the things that existed in the Smash World for him – a little taste of home. He was stripped to the waist, showing some of the scars he'd gained to his mortal body in his last life, left to linger in his self-image here. His back was to the Ylissean as he dangled his feet into the cool water. He'd prodded her into riding out here with him on Epona to have a little picnic and swim.

Lucina was sure that he'd had a specific motivation – that this was a "date," but she couldn't be sure. She'd known plenty of staggers and starts between romances and pure friendships when she'd been among the Shepherds. Once in a while, someone would start getting moon-eyes for someone who was already happily married and some people suffered from incompatible sexualities… Poor Libra! Lucina remembered him fondly – the group's priest and chief combat-medic who was a very beautiful and largely shy and romantically-disinterested man that all the new recruits mistook for female upon a first meeting. At least one of the other male troops kept on flirting with him even after learning the truth and the attention had been unwanted. Lucina had wondered upon first meeting Link if he'd had the same problem. To her eyes, he was clearly male, but he wasn't overly masculine and could easily be called "pretty."

"Yes," with a frown had been his answer to the question some time ago. He'd had that issue with a few people here in the Way-Station. He'd told Lucina that one of his previous lifetimes had been the worst in that regard and mistaken gender had frequently happened, complete with some people misnaming him for Zelda when they'd been out on delegations together. His latest body had been a little more "rugged" – just a touch more masculine than that previous one, but that it didn't keep certain "fangirls" (as he called them) in his world and era from trying to hook him up with guys they knew.

Of course, today, with the sun on his scarred back and a toned torso, he looked all-man. Was he showing off for her?

 _Gods, Link…Take this any further and I am going to smack you into next week!_

But it wasn't as if she was not enjoying the view, nor was it a view of a man she was unaccustomed to. Getting Uncle Vaike or Sir Basillio to wear a proper shirt of any kind was like getting dogs to meow.

"Well," Link said, snapping her out of her reverie, "When I reincarnate… I'm… a baby. Milk, diapers, learning to walk again, the whole thing. I'd say it's rather undignified if I could remember any of it."

"Well, yes, Captain Obvious!" Lucina teased, "What I meant was… do you feel anything at all from your former life?"

"I know this much," Link said, turning around on his rock to face her, "I forget everything while I am alive. I am supposed to focus on the life ahead of me and I think my world's goddesses do not wish me to know that I am their Hero until it is time for me to know. I suppose I'd curse their names and be just-angry-all the time if I _knew_ I had to go back and get my old stuff from a series of old ruins again and again!"

"That would be annoying, yes."

"You know how you lose your chamber-keys," Link added, "and you look all over for them and they're in the last place you'd thought to look? Imagine that with vital weapons and tools that you depend upon for your very survival! And they aren't in your pocket or on some desk somewhere or behind a bed, but in a crumbling old dungeon filled with traps and dangerous beasts who've been magically-programmed with the sole purpose in life of killing you!"

"Are you angry now? You come back here and remember things in this place."

"You bet I'm mad!" Link said, comically folding his arms in front of his chest and pouting. "I'm okay though, really," he said, relaxing a moment later. "This place makes for a great vacation destination. By the time Hyrule needs me again, I'm generally rested up and in good enough spirits to overlook having to find magical items all over again. I tend to be given new versions, anyway, upgrades and the like."

"Do you ever get a sense of déjà vu?"

"Occasionally," Link confessed. "I'm pretty sure that not all of my memory can be erased, given that my spirit is consistent. I've gotten vague feelings of familiarity. I'm pretty sure I've met my great-great grandchildren as adults when I was a child a few times. It's a strange feeling, that."

Lucina looked toward the ground and contemplated some bright, green fuzzy moss. "Do you ever miss your family? Any of your… families?"

"Yes," the Hylian answered. "But I know that they live good lives after the peace Lady Zelda and I bring. I've watched my world, sometimes – when Master Hand has allowed it. I check in to see what my descendants are doing by a scrying screen... As for my former lovers… for the most part, they've moved on – what I mean is, I actually have a choice of afterlives. I could go to the realm of my goddesses like they have and wait to reincarnate there, or I can come here. I choose here every time because I find it more fun."

"Former lovers…" Lucina said with a sigh.

"Former," Link said. "Zelda's been with me in a few lifetimes, but in our last one, we didn't feel anything more than friendship for each other. It's strange how it all works, really. When I reincarnate Lucina, I get a fresh life, yet, at base, I am still myself."

Lucina looked up. "Do you feel any lingering attachment for them… or for Zelda? Do you remember much from your days as lovers?"

"I can't say that I really do," Link said. "I remember the paths my lives took, but the families I had… it's like looking at a faded pictograph. It's like I wind up being fresh for every life, no bonds but the ones I make in a given life."

Link held both of his hands up, palms outward. "I'm… not a philanderer, Lucina, if that's what you think. It's too… weird… to fully get a grasp on. I've always been faithful and then… 'poof!' I'm dead and I have to start all over again."

"It must be hard…"

"It would be if I knew of it while alive, but I don't."

"You're starting to sound like my little brother." Lucina smiled a fond, sad smile. "He didn't remember much of the horrible time that we came from when we traveled back. I have told you about him…"

"The kid with amnesia problems, just like his mother."

"Yes. I was relieved beyond belief when we'd found him in the past because I thought he was dead, but to not remember me was painful... To this day, I suspect he went through something horrible – bad enough to blank out his mind. On the other side of it… he was so cheerful. Growing up with him… he'd always been a happy kid, but… during the dark times, he lost a lot of that, and then when most of his memories were gone, he was the Morgan I knew again. You're sounding a lot like him right now – you go through all these hardships, you get a blank slate and you're free again. I can't say I don't envy you."

"Aw, Lucina… can't we can all the heavy talk and just enjoy the forest? It's a nice day today."

Lucina looked down with a bright blush. "Link, you can't be this dumb."

"I can be as dumb as I want to be."

"I like you. There, I said it. I like you and I barely know why I'm here and I don't know how long I'll stay here or what will happen to me after my time here is up."

She looked hard at Link. "And you… You are eventually going to move onto a new life. I guess what I'm saying is… I wish I could go with you."

Link was blushing now. "I want that, too, more than anything."

"Aren't we bound to our worlds?" Lucina wrung her hands. "I don't know if I am supposed to stay here with my ancestors…with…with Marth! Or if I'm slated to live again in my world – I don't even have a TIME, Link! I didn't even belong where I ended up! I altered my own timeline!"

"Oh, I know all about that, sweetheart," Link said grinning. "Toon Link exists because I kind of… broke Time."

"Aaarrgh!" Lucina got up from her seat and paced, her fists clenched at her sides. "I don't want any more people to leave me! I don't want to leave any more people!"

"Lucy… I don't think reincarnation is going to happen to me for a long time. The Hands have Ganondorf well-sealed here. We can be together for a good long time and… if all else fails…"

"If all else fails?"

"Use fire." Link chuckled at his own joke. "Nah, if all else fails, I'll… find a way to tie myself to your world so I won't have to leave you."

Lucina was blushing hard now and she stood still like a deer caught in a pair of high-beam headlights on a lonely woodland highway.

She shook her head. "You can't do that, Link. Your world needs you."

"Well, maybe we can find a way for you to change fate again," the young man said with a wink. "I am sure a discussion with Master Hand could pave a way for you to reincarnate into Hyrule with me. We can be born together, in the same generation and we can find each other again."

"Are you sure it's possible for things to work that way?" Lucina said, hopeful.

"You tell me. You're the one who comes from a world where bonds are more powerful than Fate."

* * *

The pair rode back to the mansion as swiftly as Epona would carry them. Lucina held on tight to Link as they jounced in the saddle, letting the mare overtake fallen logs and divots of muddy earth along the way. It began raining before the pair got back, prompting them to enter through one of the back-hallways and to get some towels to make themselves less damp. They laughed as they rubbed each other's hair dry. When they entered the main hall, they came home to a scene of clamor and confusion.

"Oh, Lucina!" Luigi yelped, running up to her and grabbing her by the shoulders, "You need to come a' back to quarters quickly!"

"What is it?" she asked, a sudden cold alarm freezing the marrow in her bones. There wasn't supposed to be anything that could actually kill someone here, but she knew that people could still get hurt and the urgency in Luigi's eyes had her on the verge of panic. Fear of seeing broken angel wings on either of the Pits or Red after a mauling by Charizard danced through her head.

"Why, what happened?" Link asked, "Did old Ganondorf keel over from a heart attack or something? I know it's not supposed to happen, but a boy can dream!"

"Nah," said Falco Lombardi as he leaned with his back up against a pillar. He was one of the few in the hall that looked unperturbed. "Robin was in a team fight with Marth against Fox and me and before we even got started, she keeled over on the stage. It was the puppy-stage, too…"

"Keeled over?" Link asked with alarm. "What do you mean?"

"She dropped like a sack of rocks is what I mean," the bird-man said. "She's not a trophy, but she looked pretty sick. It just happened all of a sudden – no one laid a hit on her. Doc Mario and Marth took her to her room."

"Mother!" Lucina cried out as she took off in a run. Link followed her.

She pushed her way into Robin's Roost past Marth and quickly apologized to him. Doctor Mario was standing around and Rob was seated beside the bed. He gently held the hand of an unconscious Robin.

"She will be just fine," Doctor Mario informed the frantic daughter.

"H-how do you know?"

Link stepped past her and took a long look at the figure in the bed. "She just fell over, right? Did she say anything first?"

"Chrom," Marth said simply.

"She called out for Chrom," Rob said, "At least that's what Lord Marth and Sir McCloud told us."

"I have examined her," Doctor Mario said. "She is sleeping, but everything is in working order. She should wake up pretty soon."

Lucina shooed Rob out of his seat and took his place holding her mother's hand.

"She's dreaming," the princess said. "Her eyelids are twitching."

"Which means she'll soon awaken," the doctor said. "If you'll excuse me, I have work to do and I assure you that this is no cause for worry."

"No cause for worry?" Lucina shot back, "She collapsed on a stage!"

"I have a' seen this before," the pudgy man said.

"I have, too," Link said.

"What kind of thing?" Lucina demanded, "People suddenly losing consciousness for no good reason?" She turned back to Robin. "She looks so pale… so faded… Mother…"

"I don't know how to say this, Lucina," Link began, "But she is showing the signs of what we like to call the 'fade-sickness.' It's not really a sickness, but it is what we call it."

"She's ready to go home, finally?" Rob asked.

Link nodded.

Lucina looked to Robin and back to him.

"When people here are ready to move onto the true afterlife that is waiting for them, or to reincarnation, or, in a rare case like your mother's, to a resurrection, they get a little ill. It starts when they have an episode like she had and then they kind of start to um… feel a pull to elsewhere. Eventually, they vanish."

"No… oh, gods, no! I need more time! I need her! I just came here! I've only gotten to be with her again for a matter of months!"

"She has been waiting for this a long time, Lucina," Rob said with a small amount of pain in his voice. "It is the reward that she has been looking forward to. You said yourself that everyone back in your home misses her and wants – needs her back."

"How long?" Lucina numbly.

"About a week… three days at the shortest, a week at the longest," Link said. "That is how it is always happened with me. She'll wake up and we'll prepare a ceremony – We tend to celebrate the 'moving on' around here."

"Mother," Lucina said, stroking Robin's hair.

"Once she's awake, she should get her affairs here in order as soon as possible," Link whispered. "I'm sorry, Lucina."

"This is the third time."

* * *

 _ **To be continued…**_


	10. Phoenixes in Flight

_The beginning of this fic has some inspiration in a short fic I read a long time ago that I forget the title and author to. The plot of it was "Pit gets his fool-bum stuck on the mansion roof and Samus comes to rescue him on Charizard." While my scenario runs differently, I just wanted to get it out of the way that, yes, I had an idea sparked by someone else's work (and would like it if anyone reading this who knows the title of the fic off-hand could give it to me so I could find that fic again. I liked it)._

* * *

 **TALES OF THE WAY-STATION**

 **10: Phoenixes in Flight**

Yep. It had happened. Pit was stuck, well and truly stuck. He paced along the edge of the corner of the tower-roof that he'd managed to alight on trying to figure out a way to get down without breaking every bone in his small body. He knew that he'd just become a trophy if he'd gotten really hurt. What he'd feared was not becoming a trophy – in which case life was bound to be very painful for a bit if he didn't give himself a 'fatal' fall. And if he could make sure to make a trophyfying leap, even a temporary suicide went against his instincts. He'd tried already, running to the edge, just about to throw himself off at the point at which he was getting _really_ hungry. He'd found himself screeching to a halt on the shingles.

Why did the Power of Flight have to only last five minutes? And why had he been so careless? He'd set out for a morning flight and had used it all up in one go, not watching the time as he'd soared and finding himself having to make an emergency landing all the way up here! What was worse was that, upon doing a barrel-roll, his laurel crown had fallen off. It had to be down in one of the bushes somewhere. He couldn't rattle off a quick communiqué to Lady Palutena to come get him down. Pit knew that she'd notice him missing eventually – but breakfast was already happening! His stomach growled forlornly.

As the sun grew warm on his back, he moaned. "Breakfast must be over already! At this rate, I won't even get lunch!" He toed the edge of his corner of roof. "Too bad this isn't a bell-tower," he said to himself.

Where he'd had the misfortune of landing was merely an area that either served as some kind of vent or skylight or maybe was just around for decoration. He'd looked for any way down, even vines to climb. He was pretty sure he'd seen Toon Link climbing around on one of the vine-covered garden walls for fun once.

Oh, how he wished he'd had that kid's gliding-leaf or a cuccoo! The small angel was pretty sure he'd seen Big Link float down from a high place at least once using one of the weird, vicious chickens native to his world that occasionally popped up as a stage-weapon.

Pit, normally the friendliest of creatures, had felt desperate to get away from the clamor of everyone else lately. Everyone was tense since yesterday. One of their number had come down with something the senior members of the grounds were calling the "fade sickness." It was considered a good thing in the respect that it meant the person who had it was going to get to move on from this limbo. It was also; however, a sad thing as it meant a parting. Robin was well-liked here, so the fighters' smiles for her sake were somewhat forced. As a new arrival and not from her world, Pit barely knew her. His cheerfulness on her behalf had lead to awkward situations. He hadn't meant to make Lucina storm off by giving Robin genuine congratulations, nor had he meant to earn that glare he'd gotten from Link. Pit had decided that he definitely needed to get outside and stretch his wings a little just to escape the frustration.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of flapping wings. The white-winged angel stepped back from the roof as the owner of a pair of black wings alighted upon the roof-corner.

"Hey."

"Pittoo!"

Dark Pit grunted. "What business do you have running off like you did?" he demanded. "I was looking all over for you!"

"You were?" Pit asked. "You usually want to get away from me."

"I knew that something was up when you missed breakfast. Let me guess, you got stuck."

"It's not like that!" Pit protested.

"Then, what, are you hanging out here on this tower for fun?"

Pit's stomach gurgled.

"Heh," Dark Pit said with a smirk.

"Okay, so I got stuck. Did you come to rescue me?"

"Hardly," Dark said, crossing his arms. "I just came to see where you'd gotten off to. I suppose I should rescue you, though. Anything in it for me?"

"I don't think you can rescue me, Pittoo."

"And why not?"

"Didn't you use up your Power of Flight to get up here?"

Pittoo screwed up his brow in consternation, stomped a foot and let out a string of curses, most of which were in various languages learned from the fighters from many lands. He, too, lacked his laurels. He'd left him on his bedside table.

"So… we're stuck," he said, pacing along the same edge of roof that Pit had been pacing before. He appeared to be contemplating some of the same dangers that Pit had previously and, like his elder brother, was not too keen on risking becoming a broken mess by just diving down.

"What's a dastard?" Pit asked.

"You are," Dark Pit answered.

"What's it mean, Pittoo?" Pit asked, his eyes narrowing. "I know it's something bad."

"Rob taught it to me. It means 'a real jerk.' Like you – for getting his fool self stuck!"

"I didn't know that 'Pika-pi' was a curse word, either." Pit added. "Pikachu calls Red that all the time, I thought it was his name."

"It's Pokemon-speak for 'Shithead," Dark Pit explained with a smug grin. "Red has never caught on."

"Really?" Pit asked. "Where did you learn this?"

"Lucario," Dark Pit answered. "He's not so bad to talk to if he feels like it."

"Din's Knickers."

"What?" Pittoo asked.

"You said something about "Din's Knickers. Who'd you learn that from?"

"Link. Well, the Links. Din is one of their goddesses."

"And she wears knickers?"

"You're missing the point.

"And the point is?" Pit inquired, arching an eyebrow.

"The point is, what in Din's Knickers were you thinking when you flew off without warning and got us both stuck?"

Pit sat don and drew his knees up to his chest, hugging them. "I wanted to get away from all the stress," Pit said.

"I don't see why everyone's making a big deal out of it," the black winged angel said with a gruff sigh. He stood at the edge of the roof and stared down, doing some kind of math in his head and coming up with nothing. "Robin's going home, right?"

"Yeah, but Lucina's gonna miss her and Link's upset because Lucina is upset and Rob just looks like he's been gutted and everyone else is just kind of acting like mortals do at a funeral but she's not dead… and well, she is, but she's going to not be and I'm just confused!"

"Heh. Like usual."

Dark Pit pulled a candy bar from some secret pocket in his toga and snapped off a portion in his mouth.

He could feel Pit's glare upon him and he could hear another mighty gurgle from the boy's stomach.

"You've got food, Pittoo?"

"Not for you," the devious brother replied with a smirk.

"Give it! I missed breakfast and I'm starving here!"

"And whose fault is that?"

Pittoo took another causal bite of the chocolate-covered wafer and that was it. Pit tackled him. Feathers flew as the two boys tumbled over one another in a scrap that would have violated more than a few of the regulations if it was taking place upon one of the battle-stages.

The two found themselves rolling right toward the lip of the tower roof. They exclaimed at once;

"OH…FFF-UDGE!"

* * *

Robin had been busying herself making preparations for her departure. This mostly meant arranging the various things she'd been given for use by the Hands at the mansion to be gifted to Lucina and to Rob. Rob would make use of her higher-level tomes, although Lucina had been trained in some of the basic primers. Swords definitely were for Lucina, particularly the one that she'd had forged for her as a joke that she'd never been able to give her in life: Robin had plans to give Lucina a silver sword engraved with the name "Demonspanker" for her birthday, this because of some overheard conversation between her and her cousin Owain regarding Lucina temporarily renaming the Falchion to the "Pointy Demonspanker."

Oh, that exchange had been hilarious. Poor Lucina had taken it so seriously, especially when Owain had accused her of shaming her ancient and venerable sword! Thankfully, the girl had learned a little more humor since then. Robin had the silver sword custom-made, but had failed to gift it to her because the final battle with Grima had occurred shy of Lucina's birthday and it had been forgotten. Robin had wondered if her father had given it to her, but assumed that he hadn't since a "spirit-version" of the blade appeared in her chambers.

As Robin took to taking walks around the mansion ground, she'd found herself half-dreaming and having to pause to get her bearings. The ghosts of the dream she'd had after she'd collapsed on the stage were following her. She took it as a symptom of her fading away from this world. It had started when she chose to pay a visit to a little area that served as a chapel for the mansion. Since the place was meant to serve the needs of all the souls here, it was an empty stone room and all comers were expected to decorate it with the symbols that were meaningful to them if they needed any props for prayer or meditation and to take those symbols back with them when done. Mewtwo and Lucario used the place often, although Robin had no idea if they actually prayed to Legendary Pokemon or if it was just a quiet place they used to center themselves.

Pit knew of it, but had yet to use it. He didn't need to. He had his goddess close to him at all times.

Robin had wandered in, feeling a small need to issue a few prayers to Naga for her safe upcoming transfer back to the land of the living, to thank her for the event and to ask her to work with Master Hand to take care of her poor dear Lucina. She did a double-take when she saw a spectral figure lighting a candle in a darkened area of the little room.

"Libra?" she asked, but the blond monk did not make any indication that he heard or saw her. He took to his knees and clasped his hands before the candle. "Dear gods," he whispered, "I am here to ask what I ask every day. For the sake of Ylisse, please bring Lady Robin home safely to us."

He rose to his feet and looked dejected – as if he'd just been praying by-habit and had lost much of the faith that had been previously connected to the act. His figure turned and vanished as Robin stepped into the chapel. She looked to the altar-area to find no candles there, lit or spent.

The second time her dreams intruded into her reality was when she'd stepped outside to take a little walk in one of the fields to clear her head from what she'd seen in the chapel. Dark birds circled in the sky and she watched them. One of them sailed down in a dive before alighting upon the arm of a young man who stood at the edge of the forest. Robin approached him head-on, but he did not see her. He appeared ghostly, too.

"Henry."

"No sign of her eh?" the young sorcerer said to the crow that had taken a perch upon his outstretched arm. "Well, keep looking. I know you're better at finding dead bodies and we're looking for her alive, but, whatever it takes, nya, nya, nya!"

She went inside and looked a selection of candy bars in the Smash Mansion cafeteria, thinking that, perhaps, she just needed a little sugar. She twitched when she thought she saw Gaius behind the service counter.

"Come on, Bubbles," he said, "It's not like you to skip out on all the sweet rewards, right?"

Kirby blinked at her from behind the counter and she apologized to him.

She was seeing her friends in little glimpses of their bonds tightening, she supposed. Robin knew that the bonds had never slipped and it warmed her heart. It hurt her to think that she had been keeping them waiting for her for so long. She wondered if Gaius had been keeping to the straight and narrow in the last few years since her absence and concluded that he probably hadn't. She wondered how many corpses Henry had found searching for her and if he had… played with them. Her heart broke to think that Libra might be losing even a little of his faith. She wondered if Sully was still picking fights and kicking tail, if Gregor and Stahl were conspiring to make any great feasts for the Ylissean holidays and if Sumia was still tripping over her own shadow.

What was poor Tharja doing lately without her? Robin shook her head, trying desperately to free it of clutter when she thought she saw the ghost of the woman in one of the halls trying to cast a reunion-hex. The arcane symbols burnt into the floor vanished as Robin's boots scuffled them, passing through.

The tactician found herself in one of the gardens. She ran to a bench when she thought she saw a shock of blue hair. "Chrom?" she asked desperately.

She was greeted by the turned head and the gentle smile of a blond-as-always Link. "Sorry, it's just me," he said.

"I'm sorry, Link," Robin said. "I thought…"

"You look flustered. You ought to sit down."

"Thank you," she said as she sat down next to him. "Have you seen my daughter?"

"She's hanging out with her grandpappy," Link said, in reference to Marth. "Have you finished doing the task that was too painful for her to watch you do?"

"Y-yes," Robin answered. "I've arranged her inheritance, such as it is. I would like to spend time with her, if she is willing to."

"Of course she's willing to, Robin," Link said.

"The way she's been holing up lately, I've wondered."

"This is hard for her," Link answered. "On one hand, she is happy because the thing all of your friends and family in your world have been waiting for is nigh, but she is in pain because she is here is not returning as well. She is parting from you – again."

"I have the child version of her to worry about," Robin said bluntly. "I looked down at one my tomes in my arms when I was arranging my bookshelf for her and Rob when I was certain I'd seen my baby wrapped in a blanket – just for a moment. It makes no sense. Little Lucina has to be walking and talking by now…"

"Is that why you're so flustered?" Link wondered, stretching his right arm out on the backrest of the bench.

"I've been seeing things… weird things."

"Ah!" Link said. "Don't worry about it. It's common with fading that you see the people you loved. I get little previews of the reincarnations of some of them when I'm about to go – the ones that are set to return with me, I guess, not that I remember them when I wind up back in Hyrule. If you're going directly back to living, it would make sense that you get glimpses of your people."

"It means that the bonds are right. I've stopped running from them. I've stopped fearing what they'd think of me." Robin was smiling. "I'm not afraid that they'll fear me anymore."

"I sincerely hope that you have a good life, Robin," Link said. "I know that Lucina does, as well, even though another parting is difficult for her right now."

"Perhaps I'll get to come back here when I dream, like Chrom has done for me when I get the Smash Ball."

"Nope," Link said, looking at the clouds above them. "Master Hand has already definitely decided upon her Final Smash. She gets the 'Critical Hit' – felling an enemy with a single strike of Falchion. It's not one of the flashy ones, but it befits her, I think."

"Maybe I'll try to come back to visit anyway in terms of dreams, Smash Ball aside."

"Do you think you're that determined?"

"Oh, I know I am, Link."

"Well, you did spit in the face of the god you were slated to become."

"Grima just wanted me for my body. It was a pretty nice body – just ask Chrom."

Link laughed as did Robin, the darkest humor being what served the heroes in limbo here the best.

"Lucina wants to reincarnate with you into Hyrule when your time comes, correct?" Robin asked, having heard the story from them upon awakening.

"Yes."

"She did want to stay out of the affairs of her younger self and to not arouse suspicions in the halidom," Robin said ruefully. "I was already beginning to lay out a plan for her to stay with us before the final battle. It's of no matter now since she was killed and wound up here. It's just… if she does leave with you, whenever that is… this may be my last chance to be with her."

"Then seek her out," Link said, "Go shopping with her. Pick out horribly tacky clothes for each other! Have mother-daughter chats! Kick each other's tailbones on a stage or two! You know, whatever you wish to share!"

"Thank you, Link," Robin said. "You'd better take care of her, alright? In this world, the next, here, there, mine or yours!"

"You know I will, Robin. I love her."

"You're such a dork."

"And when Lucina and I see each other again on the other side," Link waxed, "I am certain that we will fall in love. I'll make you some pointy-eared grandchildren."

"You'd better."

"Heh, heh, that's the spirit. Now go find Lucina."

Robin rose from her seat. "I need you to take care of Rob, too."

"Of course, for as long as I remain here."

* * *

Much bullion spent in the town outside of the Smash-grounds upon dresses and armors of various colors and tastefulness later, Lucina stood between Link and Rob in the grand hall of the Smash Mansion, which was decked out in balloons and streamers.

"Congratulations Robin" read a prominent, lettered banner strung up between two support-pillars.

A pair of angels with bandaged wings and their arms in slings – a mirror image of one another - snorted at each other as they argued by the punchbowl, their laurels returned to their heads, Pit's was resting atop a wrap-around head-bandage. Dark Pit had a big patch of white gracing his cheek. Palutena had found the pair just as they'd tumbled off the tower-roof and had caught them with a wave of her staff to form a reflect-barrier to cushion their fall. It hadn't worked as well as she'd hoped – they'd bounced right off of it before crashing into the ground, but at least they weren't trophies for the big event and were well enough to grouse at each other over the hors d' oveurs table.

"When you see your man, you give him a big ol' kiss!" Peach exclaimed, prodding Robin in the shoulder.

"And anyone who gives you trouble," Samus said, "Just remind them you're a godslayer and a death-cheater."

"Ah, an endorsement from the lady who blows up planets! Nice!" Falco said. "Take care."

A faded, wobbly image opened up before everyone. It was super-imposed upon the setting of the Smash Mansion main hall like the projection of a film into foggy air. It was of a field bathed by sun with some tower-buildings belonging to a town in the distance just beyond a row of trees and a road.

"It is time," Master Hand said as he hovered behind the gathered Smash fighters. "Your world is ready for you to walk back into it."

Robin approached Rob first in saying her goodbyes. She laid a hand upon his shoulder. "Remember, you are no more Grima than I am," she said. "If you were, you wouldn't be here. You are the good part of you – of us." She gave him a tender smile. "Hold onto that."

"I will," he said simply.

"Lucina," she said, giving her daughter a tight hug. "You are the reason for this. Don't you forget any of it. You saved the world – and me."

"Mother!"

"I have to go now," Robin said, separating from the princess.

"I understand," Lucina said, smiling through her tears. "Give 'me' a better life than I had."

"I promise to."

Link snaked his arm around Lucina's waist and held her close as Robin turned, waved, and stepped into the image of the field.

Everyone gasped and watched as Robin shimmered away. A moment later, sparkling purple light gathered in one place in the field, forming a physical figure. There Robin lay in her cloak, fast asleep. Figures came riding up the road. Lucina gripped close to Link as they watched. Rob stood stoic.

The male tactician burst out a sudden grunting, suppressed laugh when a blond girl in the vision poked the sleeping figure of Robin on the ground with a long stick. "I can't remember if my world's Lissa did that to me when they found me," he tried to explain, "but… oh, Lissa SO would do that!"

A broad smile shown beneath Lucina's tears. "Aunt Lissa… never change. Look! There's Father!"

The blue-haired man in the vision reached down and picked up Robin by the hand. Immediately, she hugged him and sobbed into his shoulder. They held each other tight as the vision faded from the mansion, the field and all its inhabitants dissipating as so much smoke on the wind.

"Do you think she'll remember this place, Link?" Lucina asked.

"I don't know. I hope she does."

"I don't like to think that she's… going to find out about my death there… and not know what happened to me, that I'm alright."

"I think she'll remember," Link said softly, reaching up to run a comforting hand through her hair. "We both know how stubborn she is."

"Thank you, Link."

"Well, that's it, then," Rob said as he turned to leave the hall.

The party disbanded, each soul that remained at the Way-Station to deal quietly with what had happened in his or her own way.

* * *

 _My apologies if it feels like this story is fizzling out a bit. It kind of is. I do have a basic idea for an ending, but this was always one of those stories I figured I'd start writing and just see where it took me. I've been dawdling on it due to my frustration with making headway on original work (which I consider more important than fan fiction)… Add to that some crippling worry I have over the future (because I'm an American) and my focus goes down. In addition; communications went down for a bit and other bits of Life have happened to blame for delays. So, sorry to keep you waiting and sorry if this story is becoming lackluster. I am still trying to squeeze this story out of my brain and it's gone from fired-up inspiration mode to wresting._


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